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tough skin on one’s heel. However, when solvent-based products
were used for cleaning contaminated birds, mortality rates and side
effects were high. The human rescuers also faced risks. In incidents
before the 1970s, rehabilitators reported suffering rashes and head-
aches from exposure to solvents.^36 It would take another disaster
before methods were found to rescue birds and animals safely.
The Standard Oil Disaster
In February 1971, two Standard Oil tankers collided under the
Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, spilling nearly one million
gallons of bunker oil, the fuel oil used on ships.^37 The oil fouled
over fi fty miles of California coastline. Volunteers rescued approx-
imately six thousand oiled birds, but the spill affected as many as
twenty thousand. Those who worked in the rescue effort knew rel-
atively little about the rehabilitation of birds at the time, but that
soon changed.^38
The Standard Oil spill effectively signaled the start of seabird
rehabilitation in the United States and the genesis of a leading
organization dedicated to the task. It began when Alice Berkner, a
registered nurse, accompanied a veterinarian friend to one of the
numerous sites that had been set up in the spill area to treat oiled
birds. She describes the experience of entering the treatment center:
As long as I live I will never forget the odor that assaulted
me as I walked through the doors of the Center. It was a
horrendous mix of rotting fi sh, bird droppings, oil, and,
strangely enough, vitamin B. Almost as bad was the noise!
I’ve been sensitive to loud noise all my life and the night-
marish mix of screaming birds, guitar music, fork lifts, and
people voicing the complete range of human emotions in
that echo chamber of a building threatened to deafen me.
I was not two feet through the door when a woman came
rushing toward the exit, tears streaming down her face,
wailing “I’ve been here twenty-four hours and they won’t
give me my own bird!” It got worse, much worse.^39