Steered off course to avoid ice, the tanker Exxon Valdez tore open on Bligh Reef just after midnight, releasing roughly 11 million gallons of North Slope crude. The spill fouled 1,300 miles of Alaskan coastline, killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters, and seals, and became the defining environmental disaster of its era until the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill surpassed it.
Captain Joseph Hazelwood had left the bridge in the hands of a third mate not certified to navigate the reef-strewn waters, and the ship's radar, unrepaired for over a year, sat switched off. When the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef, it tore an underwater canyon into eight of its eleven cargo tanks, and crude oil surged out at a rate that overwhelmed the meager containment equipment Exxon and Alyeska Pipeline had staged in the region.
The spill spread across Prince William Sound's islands and inlets for months. Cleanup crews used hot water, dispersants, and even imported microbes, but much of the oil simply weathered into a tar-like residue that clung to beaches for decades; researchers found buried oil still toxic to wildlife more than twenty years later. Images of oil-drenched otters and blackened birds galvanized American environmental politics, and the disaster spurred passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, mandating double-hulled tankers.
Hazelwood, who had a history of alcohol problems, was acquitted of the most serious charges but convicted of a misdemeanor for negligent discharge of oil. Exxon spent over $2 billion on cleanup and paid billions more in settlements, but many fishing communities in the Sound say their herring and salmon stocks never fully recovered.