2. 外语
  3. On February 15, 1995, a huge oil tanker called the Sea Empress sailed into some rocks off the west coast of Wales. For the next

On February 15, 1995, a huge oil tanker called the Sea Empress sailed into some rocks off the west coast of Wales. For the next

admin2009-04-23  46
问题     On February 15, 1995, a huge oil tanker called the Sea Empress sailed into some rocks off the west coast of Wales. For the next six days it was stuck there. High winds and tides battered the ship. The accident put big holes in the ship’s body and it spilled nearly 90 million litres of oil into the ocean. That’s enough to heat 30,000 homes in Canada for one year. The storm quickly drove the oil out to sea and made it very difficult for clean-up and the crews to control the spill.
    The crashing of the Sea Empress was a disaster, but it gets worse. A lot of the oil washed up on the shores of Milford Haven Estuary, a conservation area for birds and other wildlife close to where the ship crashed. This made many residents and nature lovers around the world very angry.
                                      Oil and Water
    People are upset because oil spills happen regularly. In North America, there are over 8000 spills each year. Not all of them are as big as the one caused by the Sea Empress. Most spills are quite small—they happen in marinas(小船坞) when motor boats fill up with gasoline. Bigger spills occur when oil barrels are accidentally dumped and when ships clean out their cargo holds. But no matter how much oil ends up in the water, plants and animals suffer or die.
    In 1989, after an oil tanker called the Exxon Valdez spilled its load in Prince William Sound near Alaska, 425,000 sea birds died along with thousands of other animals, including sea otters. This ship dumped only half the oil the Sea Empress did! The Exxon spill covered 880 km of ocean and fouled about 2000 km of coastline. That’s enough coastline to reach from Montreal all the way to Winnipeg.
                                    Cleaning Up the Mess
    When oil is spilled on water it forms a sheen. That’s a very thin layer of oil that sits on top of the water’s surface. One of the jobs of clean-up crews is to try to keep the sheen from spreading out to sea. The tool they use is a containment boom(栅栏网). They wrap this boom around the oil spill to keep it in place. Once the oil has been contained it can be burned off the water.
    Another way to get rid of the oil is to sprinkle it with a product that absorbs it, like wood waste. The waste is then scooped away before it sinks. Naturally, some oil always escapes out to sea. Eventually, the oil breaks down and forms tar balls. These balls sink to the ocean floor, then sooner or later they are washed up onto shore.
    With every oil spill, some oil reaches the shoreline. The mess is unbelievable. When cleaning up a spill, the hardest job is dealing with the onshore pollution. When oil lands on rocks or mixes with sand and seaweed, it becomes really difficult to remove. Volunteers use high-pressure hoses to blast the oil with hot water. They try to push the oil back into the water. If it’s in the water they can burn it or skim it off the surface.
                                     Caring for the Animals
    After an oil spill, a lot of concerned people volunteer to help care for the animals. Very little can be done to save the crustaceans, mollusks(软体动物), and other small creatures that get smothered in oil. But the larger animals that are caught and cleaned can be saved.
    Birds like western grebe need to have their feathers washed to survive. They’re given baths with plenty of soap and are scrubbed down using toothbrushes. Turtles, otters, and all kinds of other large animals go through the same process. Everyone’s hard work pays off. Many animals are saved. But the pollution has a lasting effect—it gets into the food web and makes a lot of animals(including people) sick. Birds, fish, and scavengers like red fox eat polluted animals and become carriers of the pollution themselves. When they get eaten by other predators, they pass it on.
                                      Making Changes
    One solution to the problem of oil spills is to build better ships. Oil tankers should be built with two hulls, this would make them safer and less likely to break apart if an accident happened. The best way to stop oil spills is to get rid of oil altogether. But that’s not so simple. Without oil, people wouldn’t be able to drive their cars or motorboats, and some people wouldn’t have heat for their homes. It would be impossible to live without oil right now.
    But here’s an ideal we could all make an effort to use less oil. Fewer cars would be on the road if we drove in car pools, used public transportation, rode our bikes, and walked more often. Instead of using motorboats(which are noisy anyway), we could canoe or sail.
    Around the world, people are working on other ways to create energy. Solar power, wind power, and hydroelectric technologies are being studied and developed. So it is possible that one day we’ll be able to stop using oil. And the result of that would be no more oil spills!
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案B
解析 第四段有这样一句话：This ship dumped only half the oil the Sea Empress did．这表明1989年发生的这次漏油事件并不是最大的漏油事件。
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