Not a problem, we can do that.
Essentially the key thing is that many of the resources that we have available in the science sector now are focused very much on oil spill preparedness, response, and understanding things like and including Bunker C. We look at three things: how something behaves when it gets into the environment chemically and so on; what is its fate, i.e., where it goes; and what its impacts are.
Bunker C, or fuel oil number 6, is well known to us not only in DFO but within Environment Canada, which is really the expert on fuel content and quality. We are at a point where we know that we have some significant history with this particular substance. It behaves in a way that is quite predictable. Most of it as a result is skimmable. I don't know if that's an actual word, but we are able to skim very easily most of that off.
If we have large amounts of it that get into the ecosystem and persist for a while—as you point out it does have a degree of persistence to it—toxicity is always a measure of amount versus exposure. In this case we think that the exposure level to organisms is quite low. We have not yet detected any significant impacts from the spill on the biological community. We have not yet completed sampling of the sea floor, and the nematode community, and so on. We expect, but we don't know yet, that the impact of that will be minimal. I can't say for sure that those sampling activities have been done because it's a bit too early yet.
By and large the point is that this chemical, or this fuel rather, is well known to us in the community. We've worked with it extensively and we think we have the measures in place to deal with it.