More than 80 years after the USS Arizona went down at Pearl Harbor, scientists confirmed that oil is still seeping up from the wreck. Now, this leak is raising urgent questions about thousands of other sunken ships around the world.
@animal.world1901/TikTokThe USS Arizona sank in 1941 with 900 men aboard, and the ship is still leaking oil to this day.
The USS Arizona is still sitting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, right where it sank during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. Of the 1,177 sailors and Marines who died aboard the ship that day, 900 remain entombed inside its wreckage. And the ship, as a new study confirms, has been leaking oil ever since — every single day for 84 years.
A TikTok video posted by @belowthesurface28, which recently racked up 1.3 million views, shows the sunken ship, still visible beneath the memorial that was built atop it.
“It’s hard to believe there are 900 men still inside this ship right now,” @belowthesurface28 said.
There’s long been a claim that families begged the Navy not to move the bodies inside the USS Arizona, but the truth is more complicated, including the fact that many of the bodies simply couldn’t be recovered.
The explosion was so catastrophic that some men were vaporized, trapped in wreckage, or too badly damaged to be identified. The Navy thus officially designated the hull a final resting place. And it has stayed that way, though some families have since pushed for the opposite, working to identify crew members still buried as unknowns in a Honolulu cemetery.
Meanwhile, scientists have also grown concerned about the oil coming from the USS Arizona.
How The USS Arizona Sank In Mere Minutes With 900 Bodies Inside
Wikimedia CommonsThe USS Arizona suffers massive explosions during the Pearl Harbor attack.
The attack on Pearl Harbor began just after 8 a.m. on a quiet Sunday morning. Ten Japanese bombers struck the USS Arizona with four bombs dropped from an altitude of 10,000 feet, according to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
The first three did relatively minor damage, causing a few small deck fires, but the fourth plunged five decks down, igniting the ship’s ammunition and powder stores. The resulting explosion was catastrophic, and the ship sunk in minutes. Half of all the Americans killed at Pearl Harbor that day died on the USS Arizona.
Tim Mossholder/UnsplashThe USS Arizona Memorial today.
The Navy later determined that the wreck was too damaged to salvage. Rather than raise the ship, it was left where it sank. A white concrete memorial now stands over it. But just below the surface, the ship’s outline is still visible.
Scientists Confirmed That The USS Arizona Is Still Leaking Oil
New research published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin and led by scientists at the University of Houston and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) analyzed oil samples collected from multiple leak points on the sunken battleship in 2016 and 2018.
Using molecular fingerprinting techniques, the team confirmed that the oil seeping from the wreck is a heavy fuel oil refined from California crude, consistent with U.S. Navy fueling practices in the early 1940s.
In other words, it’s the same oil that’s been sitting in the ship since before the attack.
The Arizona had just been filled up the day before it was struck. Of the roughly 1.6 million gallons originally aboard, an estimated 600,000 gallons remain today. The ship now leaks somewhere between one and two gallons a day. At that scale, it’s a steady trickle.
Nikki/Adobe StockScientists recently confirmed how well-preserved the oil leaking out of the USS Arizona still is.
What surprised the researchers wasn’t just that the oil is still there. It’s how little it has changed.
“I would say that surprisingly, the oil has not changed that much in 80 years,” said Chris Reddy, WHOI marine chemist and the study’s senior author, in an interview with KJZZ.
“Some microbes have eaten a little of it, but I can tell you, I’ve worked on other oil spills where we have seen more degradation in six weeks than the 80 years that we see at the USS Arizona.”
The reason, Reddy explained, comes down to packaging. The oil is still sealed deep inside the ship’s tanks, in low-oxygen conditions that give microbes little opportunity to break it down.
Despite being underwater for decades, the oil retains high concentrations of potentially toxic compounds. The team also found that its chemical makeup varies depending on the leak location.
“As it moves through the maze of wreckage, it encounters varying oxygen levels, water flow, and microbial activity, shaping the oil’s chemistry and giving each leak a unique fingerprint,” said Jagoš Radović, a research associate professor at the University of Houston and lead author of the study.
What A Sunken Battleship Can Teach Us About Other Wrecks
There are an estimated 5,000 World War II shipwrecks scattered across the Atlantic and Pacific. Just in the last few years, several such ships have been located everywhere from the South Pacific to the Solomon Islands to Alaska. Most of these ships are carrying some fraction of their original fuel.
Scientists don’t really know what the oil looks like now, how fast it might escape, or what the environmental consequences could be when it does.
“It’s not an if but a when,” Reddy told KJZZ. “All these oils start to release.”
That’s precisely what makes the USS Arizona so valuable as a research site. Scientists know exactly what went into it, when it sank, and where it has been sitting ever since. The data gathered is already being applied to another area called Iron Bottom Sound near Guadalcanal, where roughly 40-50 American and 60 Japanese ships sank.
“This work offers valuable insights that strengthen preparedness and planning for future operations at other shipwrecks,” Reddy said in the statement from WHOI.
@beyondtherecord24 900 men still stuck inside the ship. #shipwrecks #sea #boat #ship #story
All That’s Interesting reached out to @belowthesurface28 for comment via TikTok direct message and comment. We’ll be sure to update this if they respond.
After reading about the oil still leaking from the USS Arizona, see some of the most powerful photos from World War II. Then, discover nine of history’s most famous shipwrecks — and how these doomed vessels met their fate.
