The Living Oceans Society have put together an animated interactive model of hydrologically realistic oil spill scenarios on the BC coastline. It has lots of features, but it can be comprehended faster by using it than having it described, which is a great thing. You can add bird habitat, fish migration routes and the like to the map, then watch them get obliterated when the ocean currents turn the wrong way. It’s super cute, and appropriately scary.

Oil shipping, processing and extraction has been strongly regulated in BC, but a number of serious threats have been coming up in the last few years (e.g. there is a long-standing moratorium on even exploring for oceanic oil off the BC coast, but the government is now claiming that it can’t find the piece of paper where that was written down). Public opposition has been strong and will get stronger. This model contributes to that discourse with a nice mix of modeling, GIS and infoporn.

Footnotes on their data sources and processing techniques are here.