Deepwater Horizon disaster altered building blocks of ocean life

refugio-oil-spill-cc
Oil along the coastline, Refugio Beach, California. Photograph: © SAF – Coastal Care.
A 2012 Congressional Research Service report warns that even smaller spills can also cause significant harm to aquatic life. Birds, fish and other marine animals can suffer impaired immune systems and find it more difficult to feed and reproduce. Captions: Discovery News

Excerpts;

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster may have had a lasting impact upon even the smallest organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found – amid warnings that the oceans around America are also under fresh assault as a result of environmental policies under Donald Trump.

Lingering oil residues have altered the basic building blocks of life in the ocean by reducing biodiversity in sites closest to the spill…

Read Full Article; Guardian UK (06-28-2018)

BP oil spill did $17.2 billion in damage to natural resources, scientists find; Science Daily (04-20-2017)
BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill did $17.2 billion in damage to the natural resources in the Gulf of Mexico, a team of scientists recently found after a six-year study of the impact of the largest oil spill in US history. This is the first comprehensive appraisal of the financial value of the natural resources damaged by the 134-million-gallon spill…

Sunlight Reduces Effectiveness of Dispersants Used in Oil Spills; WHOI (04-25-2018)
Two new studies have shown that sunlight transforms oil on the ocean surface more significantly and quickly than previously thought. The phenomenon considerably limits the effectiveness of chemical dispersants, which are during oil spills to break up floating oil and reduce the amount of oil that reaches coastlines…

Trump Spares NO Coast, Every State at Risk: A Call To Take Action, By NRDC; NRDC (01-05-2018)

Trump Moves to Open Nearly All Offshore Waters to Drilling; The New York Times (01-04-2018)

Global Climate Meeting Will Forge Ahead, Despite Trump’s Contempt; Scientific American (11-03-2017)

Pope Tells Oil Executives to Act on Climate: ‘There Is No Time to Lose’; The New York Times (06-09-2018)

“We have one ocean,” Josh Stein says, threatening offshore drilling legal action; News & Observer (02-01-2018)

Latest Posts + Popular Topics