• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.257-264
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• 2011

On April 20, 2010, semi-submersible offshore drilling unit Deepwater Horizon was exploded and sank, and 4.9 million barrels(about 778 thousand tons) of crude oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. As more than one year has been passed since the incident, a lot of investigation reports and lessons learned have been made public and also a lot more will be released soon. This paper studies the final report of the National Commission on "the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling", which was organized by the executive directive of U.S. President Barack Obama, and the interim report of Joint Investigation team of U.S. Coast Guard and BOEMRE of "Report of Investigation into the Circumstances Surrounding the Explosion, Fire, Sinking and Loss of Eleven Members Aboard the Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit Deepwater Horizon". The review is focused on the response to the oil spill. And the paper suggests how to improve national marine pollution response policy. In the paper, the Korean governments is suggested to reinforce the capability for instructing and supervising the responsible party's source control measures, to review how to introduce in-situ burning and vessel of opportunity program into our country, and to continue monitoring on the progress of developments of R&D projects related to oil spill response in the U.S..

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.115-121
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• 1999

Marine casualties of dangerous cargo carriers lead to not only the loss of human life and properties, but also marine pollution caused by spilled oil and hazardous cargo. So the prevention of marine casualties and emergence response to minimize pollution are very important problems to be settled. But until now, most of salvage assistance jobs have been done based on rule of thumb without any technical support. It is not easy to cope with the incidents safely and rapidly under the current situation. The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic and engineering salvage assistance tool available in the casualty sites. This paper contains the construction of salvage system, classification of technical items, and prototype system for the safety assessment. The developed system enable a salvage engineer in his/her salvaging jobs to perform safely and promptly.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.343-350
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• 2022

Purpose: The Taean oil spill in 2007 taught us a great lesson and is a representative example of a social disaster. It was overcome through the dazzling dedication and service of volunteers. However, behind the volunteers, they were directly or indirectly exposed to the spilled oil, resulting in health problems such as headaches and safety accidents. Safety accidents were caused by unsafe behavior, and unsafe behavior was caused by lack of safety awareness or ignorance. We want to find an education and training program to systematically raise safety awareness for volunteers in connection with the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Method: The occupational safety and health law, the laws related to coastal clean-up, and the unsafe behavior factors in the statistics of occupational accidents in the past year were mainly identified. Result: The contents of education and training hours to be provided for volunteers involved in coastal clean-up were presented in comparison with workers under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Conclusion: Safety and health education for volunteers and volunteer managers is directly related to safety awareness and can prevent unsafe behavior.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.211-216
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• 2010

On 7 December 2007, about 12,547 kL of crude oil spilled from the Hong Kong registered tanker Hebei Spirit along the west coast of the Republic of Korea, including Taean-gun, Chungcheongnamdo Province. This study evaluated the safety of seafood collected from the coastal area polluted by the crude oil. The range of total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (${\sum}PAHs$) at 22 stations was 3.9-37.1 ng/g. The concentration of ${\sum}PAHs$ was higher in oysters, Crassoatrea gias, than that in short-necked clams, Ruditapes philippinarum. Benzo(a)pyrene, a highly toxic PAH, ranged from 0.07-1.47 ng/g, which did not exceed the European Union regulatory limit for benzo(a)pyrene. The toxicity equivalent of benzo(a)pyrene in oysters and short-necked clams was 0.49-1.70 and 0.09-1.01 ng/g, respectively. The estimated life time cancer risk was very low, i.e., $1.31{\times}10^{-8}$ for the oysters and $6.9{\times}10^{-9}$ for the short-necked clams. The body burden of PAHs in bivalves originated mostly from petroleum contamination, but the levels was not sufficiently high to harm human health.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.159-169
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• 2008

This study was aimed to classify the intertidal macrozoobenthic community status after 2 years of Sea Prince oil spill, and oil spill effects along oil spreading track from heavily impacted to unaffected reference site. Field sampling was initiated in late February and continued through November 1998 seasonally, after 2.5 years of oil spill. 7 rocky sampling sites were selected among coastal regions coated and/or affected by the Sea Prince spilled oil. Identified species was 158 species, 65 family, 24 order, 9 class, 5 phylum. Mollusca was the dominant faunal group comprising 100 species (63.3%), and followed by 38 species of Crustacea (24.1%), 12 species of Echinodermata (7.6%), 5 species of Porifera (3.2%), and 3 species of Cnidaria (1.9%). On Dugpo of Sori Island, the fewest species was collected from 28 species to 35 species seasonally among sampling stations. But far away Dugpo toward Gamak Bay, the number of species increased, collecting the maximum on Sohwoenggan Island. At the wreck site of Sori Island, especially the species number of attached animals such as poriferans and anthozoans was very low compared to another site. The density and biomass on the higher tidal zone increased toward the low affected sites, but biomass on middle tidal zone decreased. The invertebrate biomass of study area was dependent on the sessile animals. The major dominant species were small-sized barnacles, Chthmallus challengeri, periwinkles, Littorina brevicula, mussels, Septifer virgatus, and so on. The biomass of C. challengeri and L. brevicula on the higher tidal zone was highest in the wreck site of Sori Island and decreased further and further. However, mussels on the middle tidal zone showed the inverse trends because of the larger individual size of mussel inhabited in Sori Island than those of another sites. As a result of community analysis, the effect of oil spill was not found distinctly. Several ecological indices and cluster analysis did not show the meaningful variation with oil track despite of the conspicuous differences among tidal heights. These indicate that the macrozoobenthic community level of oil spreaded zone recovered in some degree after the Sea Prince oil spill accident, but population or individual levels of dominant sessile animals took more recovery times.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.247-256
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• 2012

Stable carbon isotope ratio of oil components are known to be unaffected by weathering processes and thus has been widely used to determine the origin of spilled oil. In this study, molecular index and composition of stable carbon isotope in 15 crude oils and petroleum product were analyzed and used as oil fingerprints to determine the discriminating power of each fingerprinting method among target crude oils. Through the fingerprints of alkane distribution only Bintulu and B-C(1%) were distinguishable from other crude oils. The pristane/phytane ratio can classify the crude oils into three groups but differentiation of crude oils within a group was impossible using the ratio. The crude oils of A.L., A.S.L., Foroozan and B-C(1%) were differentiated from the other oils using PAH source recognition indexes of C2D/C2P and C3D/C3P. The usage of 4-mD/1-mD and 2/3-mD/1-mD ratio was able to distinguish A.S.L., Bintulu and Oman from the other crude oils. However the PAH source recognition ratios in the other crude oils were similar and thus they were impractical to be used for source identification among the target crude oils. Stable carbon isotope ratios of alkanes were able to uniquely specify each crude oil in the plot of ${\delta}^{13}C_{C21}$ and ${\delta}^{13}C_{C25}$ except A.L., A.M., Qatar-Marine, B-C(1%). The oil fingerprinting method using stable carbon isotope ratios of individual alkane compounds showed more discriminating power among the target crude oils than the conventional source recognition indexes of PAHs or alkanes.

• The Korean Journal of Malacology
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.213-220
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• 2015

After oil outlow accident of Hebei spirit in December 7, 2007, the motality of manila clam, Ruditapes philippinarum in the west coast of South Korea, was significantly increased from 9.2% in April, 2007 to 22.4% in April 2008. Although the mortality was about 10% in the tidal flat of Geunso Bay and Cheonsu Bay, Incheon and Gyeonggi-do, the values was significantly high about 30% in water coast of Taean, Boryeong and Seosan in where the spilled oil was getting into fishery zone. However, the mortality in water coast of Taean, Boryeong and Seosan was decreased from 22.4% in 2008 to 6.0% in 2009. Also, we found that the mortality in contaminated and non-contaminated water zones was both slightly increased from 6.0 in 2009 to 8.6% in 2010, Therefore, these results are indicating that the significant high mortality observed in water coast of Taean, Boryeong and Seosan at April, 2008 was due to the crude oil accident outflow from tanks of Hebei spirit. Although the mortality of manila clam was significantly decreased in middle west coast of South Korea after the accident of Hebei spirit in December, 2007, the annual production of manila clam in South Korea was sustainedly from 27,459 ton in 2007, 36,302 ton in 2008, 40,392 ton in 2009, to 36,248 ton in 2010. In the production of manila clam by regional groups, the amount in sea coast of Chungnam, where was damaged by crude oil, was significantly decreased from 10,598 ton in 2007 to 5,048 ton in 2008, but then was significantly increased to 7,065 ton in 2009, and to 12,921 ton in 2010. However, in sea coast of Jeonnam that was not damaged by crude oil, the amount was significantly increased from 1,252 ton in 2007 to 12,248 ton in 2008, but then was significantly decreased to 9,566 ton in 2009, and to 2,770 ton in 2010. Therefore the results are suggesting that a increasing of the total annual production of manila clam in South Korea in 2008 when was 1 year after the oil accident of Hebei spirit was due to increasing of clam production in a coast of Jeonnam in where was not damaged by crude oil.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.698-707
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• 2019

The removal of oil spilled by the sinking of a foreign ship in Korea's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) began in May 2019 four years after the ship sunk near Jeju Island. The cleanup was conducted by a foreign company that was contracted to the ship-owner's protection & indemnity (P&I) insurance company. In contrast to the time taken to begin the cleanup, the operation itself was completed in just 22days. Compared to similar cases, the decision to begin the removal was a delayed one. This study analyzes all 93 documents related to the ship's sinking and the eventual cleanup, confirming delays in administrative decision-making on the removal, and identifies factors that influenced this delay. These factors include a neglect of accident-related data verification, and other, legal, technical, environmental, and human aspects. Finally, this study suggests ways to improve decision-making efficiency. As the first study dealing with the cleanup in the EEZ, this research is expected to facilitate decision-making and influence the formulation of policies in the future.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.109-111
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• 2010

Recent studies have described various microorganisms that can degrade PAH, however, there are currently limited methods available to screen for PAH-degrading microorganisms. To screen for PAH-degrading microorganisms, a sublimation method (Alley, Jeremy F. and Lewis R. Brown. 2000. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 66, 439-442) was modified to produce a simple screening system. In our results, there were several bacterial species capable of pyrene degradation including genera, Coryenbacterium, Gordonia, Rhodococcus, and Streptomyces, which have been screened from 350 bacterial isolates of commercial gasoline and oil-spilled sediment by the sublimation method. The main advantage of this method is that it (i) safely deposits an even, thin and visible layer of PAH onto the agar surface without the use of solvents and (ii) the quantity of PAH sublimed onto the agar can be easily controlled. Overall, this sublimation method may be an effective and simple technique to screen for PAH-degrading microorganisms.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.25-32
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• 2000

Fire-resistant boom is one of the most important facilities in in situ homing of spilled oil. Thermal response of a fire-resistant boom to turning is experimentally investigated in this paper by using an electric furnace and a burning test facility. This test facility is composed of a test tank, a fire boom, a hood for inhaling smoke, an incinerator for burning up gases and thermocouples, etc. Thereby a systematic method of approach in small laboratory scale is developed to study the performance of a fire-resistant boom. Burning test is carried out for the fire boom model which has been developed through the present study. It is shown that the present fire boom model has capability to withstand the high temperature around 800℃ and high rate of heat flux on it due to homing. For more realistic experimental environments, larger dimensions in devices and longer time in experiments are recommended in near future.