Source of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in Prince William sound, Alaska, USA, subtidal sediments

✍ Scribed by Jeffrey W. Short; Ron A. Heintz; Auke Bay Laboratory

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 21 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0730-7268
• DOI: 10.1002/etc.5620170901

✦ Synopsis

and coworkers [1] concluded that polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) detected in the deeper subtidal sediments of Prince William Sound, Alaska, USA, derive from oil seeps in the northern Gulf of Alaska. Coal was erroneously dismissed as an alternative source of these PAHs, based on the claimed absence of reported coal deposits east of the Bering River coal field. The reference given to support this claim is apparently a geological map of western Prince William Sound [2]. This map is irrelevant. In fact, a substantial coal field lies east of the Bering River field in the Robinson Mountains near Cape Yakataga [3].

Coal-bearing geologic formations related to those containing the Bering River and Robinson Mountains coal fields extend further eastward to Tyndall Glacier in Icy Bay [4], where coworkers at our laboratory have found coal on beaches. These coal-bearing formations are extensive and are currently subject to glacial erosion. Glacial flour produced by this erosion may contain fine-grained coal particles that could be readily transported into the Gulf of Alaska and then to Prince William Sound following introduction into the Alaska Coastal Current. Thus, the source of the PAHs found in the marine sediments of the northern Gulf of Alaska may be coal instead of oil seeps, and a definitive resolution of these alternatives remains to be established. Page and coworkers should therefore have acknowledged that coal remains a plausible alternative PAH source and omitted the word ''petroleum'' from the title of their report [1].