New research has identified 6,453 oil spills of varying size across the Great Lakes. The research says data on the specific amount of oil spilled during most of these incidents is not detailed or does not exist.
The study was published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. It was led by researchers at Lake Superior State University and analyzed reports and government data on oil spills from 2015 to 2024.
“This review gives us a decade-long snapshot of reported oil spills across the Great Lakes,” said Cecilia Heuvel, a postdoctoral research associate at LSSU in a statement from the school.
While the majority of the reported oil spill amount comes from larger incidents, smaller incidents often do not include specific details on how much oil was spilled.
Around 3,600 of the spills happened in U.S. waters, the other roughly 2,800 were reported in Canada. Most of the American spills were related to shipping while Canadian incidents were “facility-related spills,” like industrial sites and warehouses
Only 35% of incidents on American territory had reported the amount of oil spilled into the water.
Data on Canadian spill amounts did not exists until 2023, according to the study.
"We tend to focus on the large spills because of their impacts, but smaller spills happen much more frequently, and their ecological effects remain largely unstudied,” Heuvel said.
The researchers say that a more comprehensive and standardized approach to data would provide more insight into ecological concerns and risk assessments on the Great Lakes.
