OXNARD : Foam, Oil Mixture Discovered Offshore

A mile-long, 30-foot-wide strip of dirty foam mixed with oil that was hanging offshore from an Oxnard beach early Thursday was probably the refuse of a ship that illegally pumped its bilge too close to land, authorities said.

The mixture was about a mile offshore from Silver Strand Beach, but authorities said the amount of oil it would bring ashore would be negligible. No cleanup was planned.

“It looked like the output from the dirtiest load of laundry,” said Dale Carnathan, program administrator for the county’s Office of Emergency Services. “Every couple of yards for a mile, you get a little glob of oil about the size of a large marble.”

The largest patch of oil at sea was a square foot, he said.

Carnathan said he determined that the substance was already too broken up and there was not enough of it to warrant a cleanup.

“You reach the point of diminishing returns,” he said. “By the time you could get anybody out there to do anything about it, most of it would be on the beach, and you get that much oil from a natural seep.”

The U.S. Coast Guard took samples of the mixture Thursday, along with samples from a nearby ship that was due to dock at Port Hueneme in the next day or two, said Petty Officer Roger Fuller. He said the samples would be compared, but he had no estimate on how long the tests would take. He said the sample would also be compared to oil that was spilled at McGrath Lake shortly before Christmas.

Carnathan said illegal bilge pumping close to shore is still a common practice, but “at least it’s not as common as it used to be.”