I've read that the climate played a big role in this. The warm waters of the gulf helped the oil break up, while the cold in the Exxon Valdez spill allowed the oil to stagnate. Also, hasn't the idea of these "oil plumes" beneath the surface been debunked?
why it is/was certainly bad and there are/will be impacts of this. I do not think the sky is falling to the point where such drastic action was taken (e.g. 6 months drilling stop).
26% unaccounted for of exactly how many million barrels of oil spilled? That's still a hell of a lot of oil.
Some of the guys I know working the clean up effort said that it didn't get reported much, but the hurricane that hit Texas earlier in the year created some pretty good churn even as far North as the spill site and really got rid of a bunch of the oil.
Oiled crabs stoke fears spill is tainting food web By JOHN FLESHER (AP) – 3 hours ago BARATARIA, La. — To assess how heavy a blow the BP oil spill has dealt the Gulf of Mexico, researchers are closely watching a staple of the seafood industry and primary indicator of the ecosystem's health: the blue crab. Weeks ago, before engineers pumped in mud and cement to plug the gusher, scientists began finding specks of oil in crab larvae plucked from waters across the Gulf coast. The government said last week that three-quarters of the spilled oil has been removed or naturally dissipated from the water. But the crab larvae discovery was an ominous sign that crude had already infiltrated the Gulf's vast food web — and could affect it for years to come. "It would suggest the oil has reached a position where it can start moving up the food chain instead of just hanging in the water," said Bob Thomas, a biologist at Loyola University in New Orleans. "Something likely will eat those oiled larvae ... and then that animal will be eaten by something bigger and so on." Tiny creatures might take in such low amounts of oil that they could survive, Thomas said. But those at the top of the chain, such as dolphins and tuna, could get fatal "megadoses." Marine biologists routinely gather shellfish for study. Since the spill began, many of the crab larvae collected have had the distinctive orange oil droplets, said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. "In my 42 years of studying crabs I've never seen this," Perry said. She wouldn't estimate how much of the crab larvae are contaminated overall, but said about 40 percent of the area they are known to inhabit has been affected by oil from the spill. Tulane University researchers are investigating whether the splotches also contain toxic chemical dispersants that were spread to break up the oil but have reached no conclusions, biologist Caz Taylor said. If large numbers of blue crab larvae are tainted, their population is virtually certain to take a hit over the next year and perhaps longer, scientists say. How large the die-off would be is unclear, Perry said. An estimated 207 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf since an April 20 drilling rig explosion triggered the spill, and thousands of gallons of dispersant chemicals have been dumped. Scientists will be focusing on crabs because they're a "keystone species" that play a crucial role in the food web as both predator and prey, Perry said. Richard Condrey, a Louisiana State University oceanographer, said the crabs are "a living repository of information on the health of the environment." Named for the light-blue tint of their claws, the crabs have thick shells and 10 legs, allowing them to swim and scuttle across bottomlands. As adults, they live in the Gulf's bays and estuaries amid marshes that offer protection and abundant food, including snails, tiny shellfish, plants and even smaller crabs. In turn, they provide sustenance for a variety of wildlife, from redfish to raccoons and whooping cranes. Adults could be harmed by direct contact with oil and from eating polluted food. But scientists are particularly worried about the vulnerable larvae. That's because females don't lay their eggs in sheltered places, but in areas where estuaries meet the open sea. Condrey discovered several years ago that some even deposit offspring on shoals miles offshore in the Gulf. The larvae grow as they drift with the currents back toward the estuaries for a month or longer. Many are eaten by predators, and only a handful of the 3 million or so eggs from a single female live to adulthood. But their survival could drop even lower if the larvae run into oil and dispersants. "Crabs are very abundant. I don't think we're looking at extinction or anything close to it," said Taylor, one of the researchers who discovered the orange spots. Still, crabs and other estuary-dependent species such as shrimp and red snapper could feel the effects of remnants of the spill for years, Perry said. "There could be some mortality, but how much is impossible to say at this point," said Vince Guillory, biologist manager with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Perry, Taylor and Condrey will be among scientists monitoring crabs for negative effects such as population drop-offs and damage to reproductive capabilities and growth rates. Crabs are big business in the region. In Louisiana alone, some 33 million pounds are harvested annually, generating nearly $300 million in economic activity, Guillory said. But fishermen who can make a six-figure income off crabs in a good year now are now idled — and worried about the future. "If they'd let us go out and fish today, we'd probably catch crabs," said Glen Despaux, 37, who sets his traps in Louisiana's Barataria Bay. "But what's going to happen next year, if this water is polluted and it's killing the eggs and the larvae? I think it's going to be a long-term problem." Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gbSfBPgY2bRbj5q9JcYoh9KMizwAD9HG49MO0
Yeah, just because the beaches aren't coated black doesn't mean everything is just fine. We know all that oil was spilling out, and I'd imagine it would take time for that to naturally degrade. As is usually the case for society, out of sight, out of mind.
BP Says It Still Might Drill in Spill Reservoir By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:34 a.m. ET NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- BP PLC says it may in the future drill in the same Gulf of Mexico oil reservoir that blew its top and caused one of the world's worst spills. Officials said Friday at a news briefing in New Orleans that the company hasn't closed the door to tapping the reservoir again. Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles says ''there's lots of oil and gas here.'' He says ''we're going to have to think about what to do with that at some point.'' The company is plugging up the blown-out well with mud and cement. Officials have also been drilling two relief wells in a planned effort to plug the hole from the bottom. BP says it will abandon the blown well and the relief wells but is leaving open the option of drilling nearby. ______________________________________________ God bless capitalism! It makes the worst cases of greed seem right and necessary.
I'm not sure why people make a big deal about oil covered birds and tarballs, because to me the bigger problem would be deadzones associated with algae killing off the oil and sucking out all the oxygen in the water. Seems like a biggger problem but then again I haven't paid much attention to the media circus, so please inform me.
That's not surprising, i remember reading that last week...I am just surprised they aren't syphoning off the oil from the the relief wells they just built...They have to offset the costs of the oil spill somehow, some $6.1 billion to date and setting up a $20 billion fund...what better way to do it than by selling the oil from the reservoir...
I personally think they will try to generate cash up front and sell the lease/reservoir itself. Also, AP article from click2houston about the marshlands. Apparently 3.4 square miles of marshlands are at risk from oil, but have had significant re-growth. To add perspective, this is compared to about 25 square miles of marshlands Louisiana loses per yer due to development. Linky: http://www.click2houston.com/news/24597874/detail.html Signs Of Regrowth Seen In Oiled Marshes Scientists Say Louisiana Coast Is Starting To Heal Itself CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writers POSTED: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 UPDATED: 6:24 pm CDT August 11, 2010 Joe Raedle/Getty Image BARATARIA BAY, La. -- Shoots of marsh grass and bushes of mangrove trees already are starting to grow back in the bay where just months ago photographers shot startling images of dying pelicans coated in oil from the massive Gulf oil spill. More than a dozen scientists interviewed by The Associated Press say the marsh here and across the Louisiana coast is healing itself, giving them hope delicate wetlands might weather the worst offshore spill in U.S. history better than they had feared. Some marshland could be lost, but the amount appears to be small compared with what the coast loses every year through human development. On Tuesday, a cruise through the Barataria Bay marsh revealed thin shoots growing up out of the oiled mass of grass. Elsewhere, there were still gray, dead mangrove shrubs, likely killed by the oil, but even there new green growth was coming up. "These are areas that were black with oil," said Matt Boasso, a temporary worker with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. As crude from a blown-out BP well oozed toward the marshes after an April oil-rig explosion, experts had feared it would kill roots in marsh grass, smother the mangroves and ultimately dissolve wetlands that plant life was holding together. State, federal and BP cleanup efforts were focused on preventing that from happening by burning and skimming the oil, blocking it with booms and sand berms and breaking it up with chemical dispersants. Whether it is a triumph of cleanup work, the marshes' resiliency or both, scientists have reported regrowth of grasses, black mangrove trees and roseau cane, a lush, tall cane found in the brackish waters around the mouth of the Mississippi River. "The marsh is coming back, sprigs are popping up," said Alexander S. Kolker, a marsh expert and coastal geologist in Cocodrie, La., with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. He's working with a National Science Foundation team looking at the effect of the BP oil spill on Louisiana's vast but severely stressed marshland - also known as the Cajun prairie - where trappers, shrimpers and alligator hunters have made their living for generations. Louisiana, the state worst hit by the oil spill, is home to the vast majority of the northern Gulf's marshland. Coastal Louisiana is covered in a thick mat of salt marshes that thrive on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, where land merges with the sea. The marshes provide life support for fauna and flora in the Gulf, said Bob Thomas, a zoologist at Loyola University, and up to 90 percent of commercial fisheries depend on them for some stage of fish development. Young bull sharks, for example, make a beeline for Louisiana's estuary to feed on catfish, bait fish and crabs, bulking up before returning offshore to pursue bigger meals, he said. Many other Gulf species do the same thing. Blue crabs, menhaden and shrimp all come into the marsh to feed on the nutrient rich waters of the bays and marshes, where peaceful grazing is easier. Many freshwater bird species also come down to the marsh to feed, mature and nest. Even before the spill, south Louisiana had been losing about 25 square miles of marshland a year, a total of about 2,300 square miles since the 1930s, mostly due to levee construction, logging, shipping and oil drilling. Only about 5,300 square miles of marsh and swamp remain in the state. Louisiana accounts for about 30 percent of the nation's coastal marsh and about 90 percent of its marsh loss, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Associated Press calculations based on how much coastline government scientists say was affected by the oil spill indicate that at most 3.4 square miles of Louisiana marshland was oiled, an area stretched out over hundreds of miles of coastline. At least some of those areas appear to have begun to bounce back. Ivor van Heerden, a BP-hired environmental scientist, said the damage may be even less than that. He said federal, state and BP oil spill survey teams have found only 550 acres of marsh that have been oiled, less than 1 square mile. "In all sectors the plants have continued to grow, even in the very worst areas," he said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concurred with van Heerden's figure but said it and other federal agencies are still calculating just how much marsh was oiled and what the effect has been, said agency spokesman Ben Sherman. Marshland closest to the Gulf took the worst of the spill, absorbing oil and keeping it from oozing farther inland. Even losing a little of it would be a blow to the ecosystem. Michael Blum, a Louisiana State University biologist who toured the marsh of Barataria Bay on Tuesday, said some of the grass won't stick around much longer. "You're seeing exposed roots," he said. "The expectation is that you will have loss of the protective sheet, you have marsh that anchors the marsh in place, and if they die off they no longer have that anchor." He added: "There's the possibility that land loss will be accelerated, or there will be a pulse of land loss associated with the BP oil spill. The question is how much and where." Many other questions remain about how much environmental damage the spill inflicted. Scientists want to understand the effects of the chemical dispersants BP used to break up the oil and look more closely at how the smallest forms of life, things like fiddler crabs and spiders, have been affected. "This is sort of the initial macroscopic view," said Tom Bianchi, an oceanographer and marsh expert at Texas A&M University working with the National Science Foundation team. He said water from the oiled marsh showed problems. "We did see some particulates, silts and clays coming out of the marsh, clogging our filters," Bianchi said. That, he added, was a sign of marsh death, which could weaken the soil and lead to erosion. The dominant plant species in coastal Louisiana is the spartina, better known as smooth cordgrass or salt-marsh cordgrass. Found from New England to Texas, it can take a beating, which is giving scientists reason to hope. "It is used to living in severe environments, salt water and soils that are completely flooded, and that combination would kill almost any other plant," said Steven C. Pennings, a University of Houston ecologist studying the oil's effect on Louisiana's landscape. Irving A. Mendelssohn, a coastal plant ecologist at Louisiana State University, said the wetlands data so far is good news for fishermen who depend on the ecosystem to produce shrimp, menhaden and other seafood. "My gut feeling, based on what I have seen, based on the recovery people have observed, I doubt that the impact to the wetlands is going to create a significant problem for our coastal fisheries," Mendelssohn said. People in Louisiana know just how vital the wetlands are and how much they stand to lose. "The marshes are what I am afraid of," said Kathleen Barrilleaux, a 57-year-old cafeteria manager at an elementary school near New Orleans, sitting back in a fold-out chair at the end of a long day on the pier fishing with her family near Barataria Bay. For now, she and her son-in-law, Joseph Breaux, a 41-year-old grain elevator worker, are upbeat. "I don't see an oil slick or nothing," Breaux said. His two daughters and wife were going back and forth on the pier tending to a fishing line and crab nets. He said he saw no signs of oil on the crabs they pulled in or on the croaker fish they caught. "We're going to have us a crab boil," he said.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/po...stingrays-and-other-animals-are-trying-crawl- On Friday, Inter Press Service reported: Danny Ross, a commercial fisherman from Biloxi… said he has watched horseshoe crabs trying to crawl out of the water, and other marine life like stingrays and flounder trying to escape the water as well. He believes this is because the water is hypoxic. … David Wallis, another fisherman from Biloxi… [said] “I’ve seen crabs crawling out of the water in the middle of the day. This is going to be affecting us far into the future.” This has been a common occurrence since BP started spilling oil into the Gulf. The Post Chronicle noted on August 12th: Some local fishermen say they are seeing strange behavior by marine life -- mullets, crabs and other creatures which normally stay well under water have been sighted congregating on the surface -- and they relate this to the spill. *** "It looks like all of the sea life is trying to get out of the water," said Alabama fisherman Stan Fournier. "In the 40 years I have been on these waters I've never seen anything like this before." The Advocate-Messenger pointed out on July 31st: Besides potentially maintaining higher levels of toxicity, the oil trapped in the water column is also suffocating the ocean, causing radical drops in oxygen levels never before seen, [Monty Graham, a biological oceanographer specializing in plankton at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab on the coast of Alabama] said. Following the oil and methane spill, Graham’s measurements of oxygen levels in the waters where he studies plankton dropped to two to three times lower than normal, to a level so low most animals cannot tolerate it. That suffocating effect is why all kinds of sea animals have been showing up in greater and greater numbers, closer and closer to shore — they can’t breathe in their normal habitats anymore. And AP wrote in June: Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again. Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange — and troubling — phenomena. Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say. The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators. "A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist. Tragically, when sea animals crowd into shallow water in an attempt to escape pollution, they can quickly use up all available oxygen. As the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection writes: The warmer water is the less dissolved oxygen it is able to hold. If the fish schooled very tightly in shallows very close to shore for any reason, they may have simply used up all the oxygen that was available to them and died.” Update: Bloomberg reports on August 23rd that scientists confirm that this is related to the oil spill: BP Plc’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may be exacerbating a natural phenomenon that causes fish, crabs, eels and shrimp to swarm the shoreline to escape oxygen-depleted sea waters. Called "jubilees" by locals because of the opportunity to scoop up seafood in buckets, they typically appear during the summer along the Gulf Coast. This year, scientists say jubilees have occurred in open water for the first time, raising concern that low-oxygen areas are expanding because of the more than 4 million barrels of oil BP’s Macondo well leaked into the Gulf. Low oxygen in the water because of oil and methane from the BP spill contributed to a “jubilee-like effect” in late June off the coast of Fort Morgan, Alabama, at the mouth of Mobile Bay Monty Graham, a senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, said in a telephone interview. Catfish, shrimp, crab and flounder piled up along an offshore sandbar, until the sharks moved in, Graham, 45, said. “Most of us believe it had something to do with the oil,” said Robert Shipp, 67, chairman of the Marine Sciences Department at the University of South Alabama. There was a “consensus” among faculty at the University of South Alabama and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab that oil played a part in the event, which was “quite different” from the naturally occurring jubilees in the Gulf’s Mobile Bay, Shipp said. *** “Oil residues on the bottom and in the water columns could exacerbate and make worse this phenomenon,” Kent Mountford, an environmental historian who has studied estuarine ecology for 46 years, said in a telephone interview. Mountford, 73, works for Cove Corp., an environmental consultancy, in Lusby, Maryland.
I'm not sure this needs a new thread so am posting this here. A new report from a commission appointed by the Obama Admin. has criticized the handling of the spill by the Admin. and also squelching information regarding the size of he spill and over emphasizing questionable estimates that showed a smaller spill size. The report also criticizes others such as Gov. Jindal. http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/06/1861165/study-slams-confusion-waste-in.html Study slams confusion, waste in BP oil spill response By MARK SEIBEL McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON -- A report alleging that the Obama administration squelched efforts by government scientists to publicize the size of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill wasn't the only study critical of the government's response released Wednesday. A second report, entitled "Decision-Making in the Unified Command," portrays the cleanup effort as confused, wasteful and often ineffective, and offers thinly veiled criticism of some of the key figures in the effort, including Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Allen, who President Barack Obama appointed as the National Incident Commander to oversee the response, saw the center he ran as intended primarily "to deal with high-level political and media inquiries" and not to direct the response effort, the report said. As a result, the public was confused about who was in charge of the response, the report said. Jindal became an obstacle to the response, the report said, when, 11 days into the disaster, he removed the state's on-scene commander and named himself to the post. "No one else had the authority to speak for the state, so all decisions had to flow through the governor's office, which slowed decision-making and caused problems in the response efforts," the report said. One major misstep, the report said, was the Obama administration's decision in late May, as it was being slammed in the news media for responding too slowly, to triple the federal manpower and resources devoted to the spill. "Coast Guard responders believed they were already throwing every resource they had at fighting the spill, but they dutifully tripled personnel and tracked their progress, at least for the state of Louisiana, in a regular report entitled 'Status of Tripling,' " the report said. The result was wasted resources and effort, the report concluded. "For example," the report said, "(Allen's) staff believed they needed to buy every skimmer they could find, even though they were hearing that responders on the ground had enough skimmers. ... At the very least, tracking the 'status on tripling' was probably not the most important task for front line responders to be undertaking." The battle for oil-containing boom among the states was another major drain on resources, the report found. Because "boom became a symbol of how responsive the government was to local communities," the report said, "boom was placed everywhere, including in passes where swift tidal currents rendered it ineffective, and in places where it was unlikely to encounter oil." "Responders were frustrated with the time they spent laying what was, in their view, unnecessary boom," the report said. BP made the situation worse, the report said, by announcing on May 5 that it would give each Gulf Coast state $25 million to spend as it saw fit. It subsequently gave Louisiana another $25 million and made smaller grants of $500,000 to $1 million to individual parishes. "This money may also have had a detrimental effect on the overall response efforts," the report said. "For example, some of the money was spent by states and parishes to purchase boom directly, limiting the overall supply of boom available to the unified command and making it difficult for the unified command to make sure that the boom got to locations where it would be most helpful and not cause any additional environmental damage." Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/06/1861165/study-slams-confusion-waste-in.html#ixzz11gWYyhPC
Kudos! You're starting to do what I usually do, which is look for a thread that's close enough to what you want to post about. Very groovy! Just wish that the goofus who named himself after a fish with a frog in it's throat would do the same. People who constantly start threads have a deep seated fear of their own sexuality. I read that somewhere. They are also afraid of fish. Women seem to be unaffected by this syndrome.
