Oily birds in wake of spill

At least 15 oiled seabirds have been spotted after Newfoundland's largest-ever offshore oil spill, but a biologist says past spills indicate the number could be in the thousands.

Husky Energy reported the sightings on Wednesday and confirmed one dead bird since an estimated 250,000 litres of oil spilled into the ocean on Friday during an intense storm.

The SeaRose platform was attempting to restart production when there was an equipment failure in a subsea line that released the oil.

Experts on seabirds say an estimate on the number of birds killed from oiling could be months in the making, but is likely to grow.

Gail Fraser, a leading seabird biologist at York University, said even a small number of oiled bird sightings are cause for concern and are likely a sign of much wider harm.

"The fact that they have found oiled birds means that there's probably a lot more oiled birds out there," Fraser said.

Prior oil spills have ended up with estimates of bird deaths that have grown into the thousands, she said.

The 2004 Terra Nova spill that released 165,000 litres of oil into the ocean is estimated to have killed around 10,000 birds.

The biologist noted the Terra Nova incident spilled less oil into the ocean, but it happened at the same time of year as the latest incident, meaning similar numbers of birds like murres and dovekies would have been in the area.

Fraser said "millions" of birds migrate to the region form the Arctic around this time of year, and the weekend's rough conditions mean getting an accurate count of killed birds may be impossible.

"The conditions were terrible and that makes it a challenge to get good estimates of how many seabirds might be killed," Fraser said. "It becomes kind of a hand-waving exercise and doing our best guess."

The region's birds are particularly sensitive to oil pollution, Fraser said. The birds can die of hypothermia if even a small amount of oil slicks their plumage.

They also have low reproduction rates and long lives, meaning a large hit to the population has a big impact.

Fraser thinks these characteristics are not always reflected when companies are fined for hurting seabird populations.

Syncrude Canada was fined $3 million in 2008 when more than 1,600 ducks were killed after landing in a tailings pond. By comparison, Petro-Canada was fined $290,000 for the Terra Nova spill believed to have killed 10,000 birds.

"To kill 10,000 seabirds is a big deal ecologically and the fine should reflect that."