Oil, you done me wrong.<\/p>\n
“President Obama said that the U.S. could \u201cpotentially preserve\u201d the Gulf Coast estuaries and marshes \u201cso that, three years from now, things have come back,\u201d a panel of ocean specialists strongly disputed that time frame, calling the 36-month prediction \u201cwildly optimistic.\u201d\u00a0 Obama made the statement in an interview with Matt Lauer on The Today Show.<\/p>\n
–From the FiscalTimes<\/p>\n
How bad is the environmental damage to the Gulf?\u00a0 It’s bad all over, in the marshes and in the water.\u00a0 I recently read an AP story that reported dolphins and sharks and other larger marine life are now congregating near the shores,\u00a0 in surprisingly shallow waters off the Gulf coast states.\u00a0 At least one whale has been found dead, and around 41 dolphins have been found dead.\u00a0 It is speculated that many of the animals are dying and sinking to the bottom of the Gulf farther out.\u00a0 Greenpeace reported that dozens of dolphins were seen swimming and playing in oil-sheened water near Grand Isle.<\/p>\n
When dolphins move closer in to shore it means that their habitat is extremely polluted, and they are fleeing fouled water in search of a livable environment.\u00a0 A big danger of oil and dispersant-polluted water in the Gulf is that it may deplete the oxygen, causing mass die-offs of all sizes and kinds of marine life.\u00a0 It may also make these “dead zones” more or less permanent.<\/p>\n
In the following interview, scientist Thomas Shirley describes the damage to the Gulf of Mexico ecosystems.\u00a0 He’s optimistic the Gulf will recover, though he thinks the damage will be long-term.\u00a0 After an excerpt of the interview, which is taken from Yale e360, you’ll find a short paper he wrote in May 2010 on the biodiversity of the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Interview: The Spill\u2019s Growing Toll On Marine Life in the Gulf of Mexico<\/p>\n
Tom Shirley says that, despite the Gulf\u2019s warm waters and indigenous population of oil-eating microbes, the impacts of this oil spill are likely to be felt for a long, long time \u2014 especially if a hurricane blows the oil deep into Gulf Coast wetlands. \u201cIf this oil spill ends up back in the marsh areas that are nurseries for a lot of these species, we will see very long-term effects,\u201d says Shirley, who also studied the impacts of another famous oil spill \u2014 the Exxon Valdez off the coast of Alaska. \u201cTwenty-one years later we still see effects [of the Exxon Valdez]. I predict long-term effects here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yale Environment 360: Given your recent survey of the marine biology of almost the entire Gulf, what\u2019s your assessment of the damage to date?<\/p>\n
Thomas Shirley: Well, I really don\u2019t have hard data on damage. The only thing we have so far are body counts of the oiled birds, questionable data about the causes of deaths of many marine turtles and a few marine mammals. But, no doubt with [...]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil, you done me wrong. “President Obama said that the U.S. could \u201cpotentially preserve\u201d the Gulf Coast estuaries and marshes \u201cso that, three years from now, things have come back,\u201d a panel of ocean specialists strongly disputed that time frame, … Continue reading