MMS WORLDWIDE TANKER SPILL DATABASE: AN OVERVIEW

The report is an attempt to share the contents of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) Worldwide Tanker Spill Database with other government, public, and private entities. The report includes various spatial and temporal distributions of the more rigorous data from the database. Each section of the report focuses on a particular analysis of the data; because the data needed were sometimes incomplete, the number of spills in each section can vary. Each discussion contains a short description of the data included in the analysis and the overall results. In some cases, suggestions are made regarding possible external factors that may have caused or affected a specific distribution, but no attempts have been made to prove cause and effect.