Statistical Analyses of Marine Oil Pollution in a Sea Region of High Economic Use: The Western Java Sea

We used about 2000 Sentinel-1 SAR-C images of the Western Java Sea for statistical analyses of the marine oil pollution in that area. Our results demonstrate that most pollution was found along the main ship traffic routes, and further hot spots of oil pollution were found in offshore oil fields. Although the mean wind speed in the area of interest is generally low enough to support the visibility of oil spills on SAR imagery, we found a reverse correlation with the number of oil spills per SAR image. About 50% of the oil spills covered a sea surface area up to 0.5 km2, and another 50% had an axes ratio up to 10, i.e., they were elliptical or quasi-circular. Comparing results obtained by different operators we found that the absolute numbers of oil spills differed, but the qualitative conclusions, regarding the location of pollution hot spots, are the same.