Abstract
There are currently several offshore oil and natural gas drilling projects being carried out in the Sea of Okhotsk. Therefore there has been increased the possibility of the ocean pollution of the coastal areas of Hokkaido on both the Japan Sea and Okhotsk Sea sides. Oil spilled from the oil tanker Nakhodka was recovered using buckets lowered from grab dredgers and self-propelled grab barges. This method of oil recovery was effective, but one problem was the large volume of sea water collected in buckets together with the oil. To resolve this problem, the authors developed a new type bucket with many holes in the bottom. The principle of the recovery method is to utilize difference in viscosity. This paper reports the recovery method for spilled oil by using newly developed buckets.
