Despite BP's claims and reports that have surfaced minimizing the impact of oil dispersant use in the Gulf of Mexico, news about deformation and anomalies in the marine life of the gulf surfacing at an alarming pace.
Indeed those who work trawling the gulf sea for fish are astounded at what comes up in their nets.
And the findings are not limited to one zone, but are being validated all along the coast, where similar findings have occurred.
Indeed all of the zones that have been touched by the BP oil spill and its dispersants have resulted in the same findings.
Many mutated shrimp, crab and fish with significant deformation or anomalies keep coming to the surface almost two years after the dispersants were used.
Some scientists also believe that a lot of the oil has remained at the bottom of the sea floor in unseen plumes, during the spill, and that these deposits are impacting the marine life.
Tests conducted in the water of the Gulf by a chemist, Ms. Subra, have proven that there are significant levels of pollution in oysters and crab population along the Louisian coastline. The hydrocarbons, derived from the breakdown of the oil, are also in the soil and vegetation. The oil too is a cause of the lesions, as the University of Florida has found when they surveyed the area. 2 to 5% infection rate in the oil impact ares, but with 20 or more species of fish. In many areas, 20% of the fish was found to have lesions, and in others it was found to be as high as 50%. They attribute this to the oil settling on the seafloor.
When she asked NOOA to relate what the percentage of fish found with sores was before the BP disasters, the answer was less that 0.10% of the fish population.
Fisheries are also collapsing with the numbers of fishes a fraction what it was before the oil spill. The shrimp are mutilated, fish swim around with black sores, crabs lack claws and eyes.
A local commercial fishermen has said that on the last of the white shrimp season, 400 pounds of deformed and mutilated shrimp surfaced with the nets. In the same area, 50% of the shrimp population was found to be deformed.
and they are not just caught in these conditions close to shore, but all the way out to sea too, in Alabama, in Mississippi, and in the open Gulf.
Some fishermen describe the catch as if it were singed by chemicals. Some describe the shrimp, some varieties of which have been all but wiped out, as having tumors growing out of it.
Some of the scarred fish are alive, but when they are opened up they smell as if they had been dead for a week.
Some fishermen are saying that the catch this year is almost as low as 10% of two years ago, before the BP disaster.
Many are pointing their finger at BP's dispersant as the cause of the deformities and drop in numbers. They call the chemicals used to disperse the oil as barbaric, since they are composed of solvents, some of the most toxic chemicals known to man. They can dissolve oil, and rubber, and there is no way that marine life is not impacted by them.
Shrimp are particularly vulnerable, due to their short life cycle. Exposure to dispersants in the water is all encompassing, since it is digested, contacted and inhaled, not to mention that the eyes of the marine life are also singed by the chemical on contact. Dispersants are known to have some of the most lethal effects on the human body, and they are highly teratogenic, i.e., cancer causing.
When the international news agency Al Jazeera asked Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal to answer some of the questions they were to pose on the possible causes of the findings, his office replied that they were constantly testing and the the results showed that chemicals found int he water were below the threshold of safety for both oil and the chemical dispersants so that they do not pose a risk to human health.
In addition, both the FDA and the EPA, the two chief monitoring agencies referred Al Jazeera to NOOA for any answer on the matter.
And NOOA cannot answer the queries on the grounds that the information collected in the Gulf of Mexico cannot be divulged, since it is slated for use in the upcoming trial against BP. BP on their part echoed gov. JIndal's answer by saying that the "seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested int he world, and according to both NOOA and FDA it is as safe now as it was before the accident." It even goes so far as to say that fish lesions are common, and that there was evidence of that before the oil spill occurred.
But a marine biologist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Prof. Felder has been monitoring the area before and after the spill and he has related that they have samples of before and after. And in the area of Grand Isle, Louisiana, the lesions are so severe, that they are eating through the shell of crabs, who also have other abnormalities. According to him, the incidence of lesions is even worse in deeper waters. He is advancing the theory that the cause might lie in a new generation of microbes that have been generated by the oil sediments, microbes that have mutated, and are now attacking more than just oil..
In fact where the lesions begin in the marine life is where the entrance is for such microbes to attack and digest whatever matter they cling to.
Another culprit could be the 'mud' used in underwater drilling to stop the well from spilling out. It was pumped into the well as a plug, before it could be capped. The 'mud' is made of manganese precipitates. And that could be what generates the black lesions seen on the marine life.
Another scientist, Prof. Whitehead, of the Louisiana State University, has published an important work, that shows a direct link between BP's oil in the water and the negative effects on the marine life in the Gulf. He says that the evidence is in the location of the spill which coincides neatly with the areas where marine life is affected. The indicator species for oil contamination, the killfish shows very clear signs of exposure to the toxicity of oil deposits in the sea. Killfish is important because they are the food for the fish that are consumed at the table. And if the population of Killfish is wiped out, the most crucial link in the food chain is wiped out.
A biological oceanographer, Ed Cake, is very concerned about the fate of the fish life in the Gulf. Hundreds of dolphin deaths have been reported since the disaster. They are at the top of the food chain, therefore, whatever ultimate consequence the spill has, it will manifest itself in the dolphin. The chemical they assume through the food chain settles in their fat. Because they are mammals, the young rely on the fat for its survival, so that there are a lot of problem both with the development of the young and stillbirths. What is worse, the recovery times for these kind of spills are in the decades. The Exxon Valdez decimated fisheries in Alaska that have yet to recover, and that was 23 years ago.
And oil is still coming up in the nets, in big balls of black tar.
Source: Al Jazeera 3.24.13
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