lost

"Lost Season" is a deeply honest and personal narrative of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill by Toby Sullivan, a fisherman and writer from Kodiak. First published in the Anchorage Press in March 2004, the essay remains one of the best written accounts of the largest oil spill in American waters.

At the time the essay was first published, 10 years had passed since Exxon began appealing a 1994 Alaskan jury award of $5 billion in punitive damages to 40,000 claimants. The case ended in June 2008 when the U.S. Supreme Court slashed the award by almost 90 percent, to $530 million. Exxon continues to fight paying interest on the money.

Since the spill, 10,000 of the original punitive damage claimants have died and elevated rates of PTSD continue among the human survivors in Cordova, Kodiak, and other oiled communities as a result of the spill and the lawsuit. And Exxon oil still still seeps from the beaches of Prince William Sound, contributing to decreased survival rates in salmon, herring, sea otters and orcas.