We probably all remember the disastrous BP oil spill of 2010, when over 4.1 billion barrels of crude oil spewed into the ocean over the course of three months. This has become old news– I personally haven’t heard about this oil spill for a long time and the media rarely talks about it anymore. But even though the leak has been stopped and the panic has died down, some of the more serious effects of this event are only just starting to be felt.
This past fishing season has unearthed an extremely high number of deformed animals, including eyeless, clawless, or shell-less crabs, fish with lesions and tumors and no livers, and clams with soft shells.
The Simpsons called it years ago (Picture courtesy of taringa.net)
In fact, according to Louisiana commercial fisher Tracy Kuhns, more than half of the shrimp caught in a popular shrimping area by the Gulf of Mexico had no eyes. One fisherman caught 400 pounds of shrimp at the height of the shrimp season, none of which had eyes (or even eye sockets).
In the meantime, researchers from the US and Australia discovered that embryos of large commercial fish (including herring, salmon, tuna, etc.) also tended to develop deformities and have shorter lifespans after being exposed to crude oil.This study was done in a lab, and although people haven’t noticed major dents in commercial fish populations due to these deformities, it’s a little alarming that oil can have long-lasting effects that go beyond just coating someone’s feathers or gills, and that can appear a long time after the disaster.
But why are these effects only showing up now? It turns out that crude oil is a mutagen that damages the DNA of many different animals. After several generations, these changes actually become part of the species’ genome and can lead to birth defects or cancer.
Shrimp with tumors and no eyes
(Photo courtesy of thinkprogress.org)
This raises even more concerns— how can this affect beachgoers in Florida and other places in the South? What did the fishermen do with all the deformed animals they caught? What about dolphins, whales, and sharks that depend on these creatures for food? Are there any other less visible effects that could be even more dangerous? One thing we can be sure about is that the consequences of the spill are turning out to be much messier than we had thought.
So what does the government plan to do to address this issue? Go back to offshore drilling as soon as possible, of course. In fact, oil companies have pretty much gone back to doing whatever they were doing before the spill, and Senator David Ritter of Louisiana is currently advocating for more drilling permits for the Gulf of Mexico. “Mother Nature has proved amazingly resilient with recovering from the spill,” he cheerfully observed.
Sources:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140310090615.htm
