Satellites Put Annual Ocean Oil Slicks at About 610,000 Square Miles
SkyTruth says ships and offshore oil equipment account for most of the pollution, with more than 90% of estimated slicks inside national waters.
4 Articles
4 Articles
Satellites Put Annual Ocean Oil Slicks at About 610,000 Square Miles
Conservation group SkyTruth estimates oil slicks cover about 610,000 square miles of ocean each year, an area far larger than the tanker disasters that usually make the news. The Sept. 23 analysis draws on the group’s Cerulean platform and Sentinel-1 radar images from 2023 through 2025. It maps chronic slicks tied to ships and offshore oil equipment, not only rare blowouts. The raw figure is 1.58 million square kilometers, or roughly 610,000 squ…
Each year, oil slicks cover an estimated 1.58 million square kilometres of ocean surface. This is the result of a new study by the satellite tracking organization SkyTruth, which crossed images captured between 2023 and 2025 with its Cerulean monitoring system. 22,775 slicks were detected over the period. The organization attributes 81% of the polluted surface to ships, compared with 18% to offshore infrastructures. The study points to several a…
Ships blamed for bulk of chronic ocean oil pollution
Ships are associated with the overwhelming majority of attributable chronic oil pollution at sea, according to a new global analysis from satellite-monitoring group SkyTruth. The study estimates that around 1.58m sq km of ocean surface is covered by oil slicks each year, with more than 90% occurring inside national waters, often close to coastlines. By …
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