Huntington Beach Oil Sheen Likely Natural Seepage, Says Coast Guard

A miles-long oil sheen off the coast of Huntington Beach appears to be natural seepage from the ocean floor, the U.S. Coast Guard said March 11. The sheen was first spotted March 7. Responding crews wrapped up their operation Monday after retrieving approximately 85 gallons of oil during the weekend, the agency said. Additionally, they cleared around 1,050 pounds of oily waste, sand, and tar balls from the shoreline. Officials confirmed that the substance from the sheen and the tar balls is “lightly weathered crude oil rather than a refined product like gasoline or diesel,” though they failed to “definitively identify the oil source” based on the collected samples, the agency said in a statement....