La Jolla beach cleaned after reports of tarballs

Seventeen crew members from the Coast Guard were seen cleaning Windansea Beach on Monday, soon after reports and photos of tarballs on La Jolla beaches began surfacing more than two weeks after a broken pipeline spilled at least 25,000 gallons of crude oil off the Orange County coast.

“We are continuing our efforts to make sure everything is cleaned up,” Coast Guard spokesperson Adam Stanton said. “More and more tarballs can come onto the beach, so we are going to try and get it entirely cleaned up.”

Stanton said the tarballs were linked to the oil spill. There was no estimated timeline for when the beach would be considered cleaned.

Local beaches remain open, and public health is not considered to be at risk.

However, experts advise people who encounter tarballs on local beaches not to handle them or any oil but rather email tarballreports@wildlife.ca.gov.

In the days since the spill was first reported Oct. 2 off the coast of Huntington Beach, tarballs had been spotted as far south as Del Mar. But as of last week, the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla said it had found no evidence of oil in the waters off La Jolla through daily drone surveys and water samples.

A representative of Scripps Oceanography did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Jyoti Mayadev, a professor at UC San Diego and a researcher at the university’s Moores Cancer Center, told the La Jolla Light in an email Sunday night that she had found “numerous” tarballs along the beach at La Jolla Shores that evening.

“They were everywhere,” said Mayadev, a La Jolla resident.

According to Southern California Spill Response, this type of oil contains hazardous chemicals, and “if skin contact occurs, wash the area with soap and water or baby oil. Avoid using solvents, gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel or similar products on the skin. These products, when applied to skin, present a greater health hazard than the tarball itself.”