Friday, August 13, 2010

Gulf Oil Disaster - out of Sight out of Mind?


From a message by a friend.
He's a Shark researcher who operates out of New Orleans.

There is a lot of that going on right now.
In my opinion it is still a horrible thing and the worst disaster this area has seen, however it happened in the 8th largest body of water in the world.

Its not surprising that the oil is becoming more and more difficult to find.
Dilution and currents do amazing work when it comes to surface oil. Also the shear amount of dispersant played a huge role in why the average person is not seeing the oil, it all sank to the bottom where it could be doing either no harm at all or more likely a large amount of damage to the benthic and pelagic communities.

I highly doubt we will see an immediate drop in population numbers, its even possible that misleading reports will appear stating there was no damage because they will see an increase in species populations because of the fishing ban.

Shrimp numbers for example should be very high because that's a lot of boats not going out there everyday. These reports are coming on the news, local publications, and internet sites.

The further away we get from capping the well, the more people will forget this ever happened and getting funding and proper research completed will become more and more difficult.

We head out to the islands to check everything out in 2 weeks so I'll be sure to let you know what we see, but I have a feeling that this will be exactly like they were last year and we will still have a health population of lemons.


Please also read this article.
Looks like it's just a matter of time before somebody shouts drill baby drill again!

And who's surprised!

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