10th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters/via REUTERS
A rescue ship works to extinguish the fire on the stricken Iranian oil tanker Sanchi in the East China Sea.
- Thirty years ago, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground on a reef in in Alaska's Prince William Sound and dumped 11 million gallons of oil into the ocean.
- The spill affected almost the entire Alaskan coastline, killing birds, sea otters, harbor seals, orcas and other wildlife.
- Since Exxon Valdez, more than 9,500 tanker spills have occurred worldwide. Some 20 years later, the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico dumped 19 times more oil into the ocean than Exxon Valdez did.
- Humans also contaminate global waters by dumping industrial waste water and polluting the ocean with plastic.
- Often, recovery from the effects of these man-made disasters takes decades. In the case of Exxon Valdez, some oil still lingers in the Gulf of Alaska.
At 12:04 am on March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck the Bligh Reef, less than 2 miles off the coast of Alaska.
In the remote waters of the Gulf of Alaska, the tanker hemorrhaged some 11 million gallons of oil into the ocean.
An ill-timed storm followed, spreading the oil along Alaska's coastline. Hundreds of thousands of animals died, and even after billions of dollars spent on clean-up efforts, the environment remains tainted by oil.
At the time, Exxon Valdez was the worst disaster of its kind in US history. But today, the spill barely cracks the list of the 40 worst tanker oil spills around the world, according to the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF).
The Gulf oil spill - sometimes called the Deepwater Horizon or BP spill - off the coast of Louisiana blew the Exxon Valdez record out of the water. That disaster poured some 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over the course of 87 days between April and July 2010. An area the size of Rhode Island was closed off from fishing, and local economies tanked. And yet these two US disasters still pale in comparison to some of their international counterparts.
Here are 13 of the most devastating man-made ocean disasters in history.