MIKE

Posts Tagged ‘Gulf of Mexico’

Posted on Thursday, July 1, 2010

BILOXI, Miss. — University scientists have spotted the first indications oil is entering the Gulf seafood chain — in crab larvae — and one expert warns the effect on fisheries could last “years, probably not a matter of months” and affect many species.

Scientists with the University of Southern Mississippi and Tulane University in New Orleans have found droplets of oil in the larvae of blue crabs and fiddler crabs sampled from Louisiana to Pensacola, Fla. The news comes as blobs of oil and tar continue to wash ashore in Mississippi in patches, with crews in chartreuse vests out cleaning beaches all along the coast on Thursday, and as state and federal fisheries from Louisiana to Florida are closed by the BP oil disaster.

“I think we will see this enter the food chain in a lot of ways — for plankton feeders, like menhaden, they are going to just actively take it in,” said Harriet Perry, director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. “Fish are going to feed on (crab larvae). We have also just started seeing it on the fins of small, larval fish — their fins were encased in oil. That limits their mobility, so that makes them easy prey for other species. The oil’s going to get into the food chain in a lot of ways.”

Perry said researchers have not yet linked the hydrocarbons found in the crab larvae to the BP disaster, but she has little doubt it’s the source. She said she has never seen such contamination in her 42 years of studying blue crab.

Richard Gollott is Mississippi’s Department of Marine Resources commissioner for the commercial seafood industry and a seafood processing-plant owner from a family that’s been in the business for generations. He said closure of Gulf fisheries “appears to have been the right thing to do.”

“We are taking a beating with this,” Gollott said. “But we would rather have our industry have a season closed down for a year or even two years rather than get a bad name. We have to take the long-term view. The worst thing in the world would be to take a short-term look at this and not be worried about the public, the consumers.”

Gollott said he is still hopeful Gulf seafood can make a quick recovery, in “months instead of years,” and be safe and plentiful. He said right now the only Gulf seafood he’s supplying is coming from Texas, where fisheries are still clear and open.

“You’ve got to be optimistic to be a fisherman,” Gollott said. “As quick as we can get our scientific facts and ducks in order, get FDA to check everything from Florida to Texas and make sure it’s OK, I think we will get our market share back. But that will take some marketing and some work.”

DMR Director Bill Walker said Thursday he was unaware of the USM–Tulane findings. He said DMR biologists continue to test the meat of shrimp and other edible species and have “not gotten any positive hits” for oil.

“But we are just testing the edible tissue, for public health,” Walker said. “The more-academic research is looking at other parts of these critters. Sometimes materials will concentrate in the more oily tissue, but not make its way to the edible tissue.”

Perry said the oil found in the crab larvae appears to be trapped between the hard outer shell and the inner skin. Perry said, “Shrimp, crab and oysters have a tough time with hydrocarbon metabolism.” She said fish that eat these smaller species can metabolize the oil, but their bodies also accumulate it with continued exposure and they can suffer reproductive problems “added to a long list of other problems.”

BP-contracted crews cleaned tar balls and patches from mainland beaches on Thursday. Walker said there are reports of oil or tar on or near all the barrier islands, although still in relatively small, isolated patches — “small in the sense of up to several hundred yards at a stretch,” Walker said.

Harrison County Emergency Manager Rupert Lacy said storms the last few days “shook (tar pieces) up, shifted them around,” but cleanup workers “are doing what they need to do,” and getting beaches cleaned.

“Until they can get that well capped off and they get those big skimmers out there and really get into the skimming operations, we’re going to see the remnants of this,” Lacy said. “This is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.”

Perry said scientists are having to learn as they go along with the BP oil disaster.

Read the entire article HERE.

06/25/10 Update (Oil Balls washing up on beaches):

UPDATE #1:

When you pour more than a million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants on top of an oil spill, it doesn’t just disappear. In this case, it moves to the atmosphere, where it will travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles from the site of the BP oil spill, in the form of toxic rain.

BP’s oil spill-fighting dispersant of choice is Corexit 9500. It has been banned in Europe for good reason. Corexit 9500 is one of the most environmentally enduring, toxic chemical dispersants ever created to battle an oil spill.  Add to that the millions of gallons of oil that have been burned, releasing even more toxins into the atmosphere, and you have a recipe for something much worse than acid rain.

Oil in the environment is toxic at 11 PPM (parts per million). Corexit 9500 is toxic at only 2.61 PPM. But Corexit 9500 has another precarious characteristic; it’s reaction to warm water.

As the water in the Gulf of Mexico heats up, Corexit 9500 goes through a molecular transition. It changes from a liquid to a gas, which is readily absorbed by clouds and released as toxic rain. The chemical-laden rain then falls on crops, reservoirs, animals and of course, people.

What makes ‘Corexit rain’ so frightening are the carcinogens it will leave behind on everything is touches. Acid rain will be considered genial after it is inevitably replaced by the far more virulent ‘Corexit rain.’

It is futile to believe that we can keep ‘Corexit rain’ from occurring – it has already been released and the molecular transformation has begun. We have set off an unprecedented chain of events in nature that we cannot control.

By releasing Pandora’s well from the depths and allowing it bleed into the sea at a rate of 2.5 million gallons of oil a day, the unimaginable becomes material.

Yet unlike a bad dream, we will not wake up from this nightmare and find it gone. The BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill will be touching millions of earth’s life forms for uncountable years.

Read the entire article HERE.

According to Sagalevich’s report, the oil leaking into the Gulf of
Mexico is not just coming from the 22 inch well bore site being shown on
American television, but from at least 18 other sites on the “fractured
seafloor” with the largest being nearly 11 kilometers (7 miles) from
where the Deepwater Horizon sank and is spewing into these precious
waters an estimated 2 million gallons of oil a day.