Areas where the oil spread after the spill. See this map and others.

And November's the month last year when the Cosco Busan crashed, leaking 53,000 gallons of black goo into San Francisco Bay.

So biologists will be particularly attentive this November, one year after the oil spill, to see if there's a noticeable dip in the numbers of herring in the Bay, or the number of migratory birds that alight here.

The number of birds harmed by the oil spill is not really known. More than 2,000 birds were killed – but those are simply the birds that were identified, not the total number. Since many dead birds in remote areas were never found, and since predators took away many of the hurt birds, the estimate for the total number of birds harmed by the spill is many times higher than that. So researchers are conducting experiments to determine a provable, scientific estimate of the number of birds killed or harmed by the oil spill.

According to California Fish and Game scientist Julie Yamomoto, it only takes a spot of oil the size of a nickel to harm a bird. It's not just uncomfortable, she says, it's actually lethal – because the oil is like a hole in a wetsuit, and birds that have been oiled become hypothermic. And they also lose buoyancy, so birds can actually sink and drown in the ocean.

All the experiments and data on habitats, fish, birds and other wildlife will be compiled into something called the Natural Resource Damage Assessment.

It's nicknamed NRDA (pronounced "nerd-a") and that's pretty apt. It's a little wonky, to say the least. The data is supposed to be completed by the end of next year, and then the NRDA report is expected to be compiled and submitted sometime in 2010.

Listen to the Oil Spill Anniversary radio report online.

You may listen to the "Cleaning Up Oil in the Bay" radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.

Amy Standen is a Reporter for QUEST and Radio News at KQED-FM.

latitude: 37.7631, longitude: -122.4093

Oil boom at Crab Cove. Credit: gwen

Go to: KQED | News: SF Bay Oil Spill

See and contribute photos to KQED Public Radio's: SF Bay Oil Spill photo pool.

Craig Rosa is an Interactive Producer for QUEST at KQED.

latitude: 37.7631, longitude: -122.4093

Oil booms at Crissy Field. Credit: fredsharples

It seems that the fate of birds in these situations provokes an especially emotional response in most people. Maybe it’s their visibility, maybe it’s the metaphor of losing flight, but there’s something about an oil-covered bird that makes plain the most tragic consequences of human interactions with nature.

Standing at the beach (which I visit frequently because it’s across from my office) made me realize how much there is to understand about the Bay’s inner workings. Knowing that there was much less oil on Crissy Field than at Rodeo Beach made me consider how the Bay’s currents flow than I had before. The booms floating in the water prompted questions about whether marine microorganisms are filtered out along with the oil, what role such critters play, and how they’re faring in an oily environment. Watching ducks splash about in the marsh, I wondered about the less-visible fates of the plants and fish below the surface. No doubt the oil spill's effects are beyond birds and oily blobs on the beach, hidden to those of us unfamiliar with the Bay’s ecosystems and mechanics.

While Craig and I meandered the dunes with Park Service staff days before, we learned that Crissy Field is an ever-changing environment, always in flux, sometimes through forces of nature and sometime at the hands of humans. Remembering this was heartening. Crissy Field has gone from natural shoreline to air strip and back to shoreline again, and has recovered from past oil spills much larger than this one. Nature (with a little help from concerned citizens) has amazing repair mechanisms, and has allowed Crissy Field to survive many assaults during its history. Despite its current scars, it will survive this as well.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

latitude: 37.8058, longitude: -122.4530