Oil spill volume is a limited measure of damage or impact. Smaller spills have already proven to have a great impact on ecosystems, such as the "Exxon Valdez" oil spill because of the remoteness of the site or the difficulty of an emergency environmental response. Since 2004, between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been leaking from the site of an oil-production platform 12 miles off the Louisiana coast which sank in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan. The oil spill, which officials estimate could continue throughout the 21st century, will eventually overtake the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizion disaster as
Prestige oil spill a rupture and quickly release much of the remaining oil and create another catastrophic spill. The report urged the government to take "prompt" action. Experts predicted marine life could suffer from the pollution for at least ten years due to the type of oil spill, which contained light fractions with polyaromatic hydrocarbons and could poison plankton, fish eggs and crustaceans with carcinogenic effects in fish and potentially humans as well. In the subsequent months, thousands of volunteers joined the public company TRAGSA (the firm chosen by the regional government to deal with the cleanup) to help clean the affected coastline.