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I'm curious, during WW 2 there were literally hundreds of tankers sunk or damaged including quite a few off the U.S. coast. Granted these tankers were quite a bit smaller than the supertankers of today but I don't recall hearing too much about fouled beaches or dead wildlife during the war. Can someone please explain this to me?

The sea eats it up. Under sea oil seeps (natural geological features) put more oil in the ocean than spills do. The things is a wreck is just so concentrated when it washes up on a nearby shore that it messes things up. Release the same oil a couple thousand feet down and it will be pretty broken up and dissolved by the time it comes up you will not notice it.

One of my watch sailors had been USN armed guard (they manned the guns)on merchant ships during WWII. He told me they had someting similar to a hiring hall where the navy sailors reported to get their merchant ship assignments. He remembers seeing guys that got their assignments in the morning or day before and showed up in the evening, soaking, wet because they had been torpedoed. They had no where else to go.