SEVENSEAS Marine Conservation & Travel Issue 13, June 2016 | Page 90

There is Use in Crying Over

Spilled Oil

Marcus Reamer

n Thursday, May 12, an unfortunate, yet familiar set of headlines began to surface:

“Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico”. About 90

miles from Louisiana, a Shell oil line ruptured, allowing over 88,000 gallons of crude oil to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. To put things into perspective, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, more commonly referred to as the BP oil spill, allowed over 210,000 gallons of oil into the same body of water. Thankfully much of the oil from this May’s spill was contained and was not anticipated to affect United States shorelines, but we have a bigger problem on our hands: since 2012 alone, 147 oil spills totaling almost 517,000 gallons of oil, more than double that of the 2010 BP spill, have occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. Accidents certainly happen, and oil exploration offers numerous jobs and opportunities for communities in the Gulf and other regions, though half a million gallons of crude oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico over a four-year span is completely unacceptable—just imagine the amount of oil we have spilled in all of the places in the world in which offshore oil exploration occurs! The silver lining is that these larger events do receive media coverage, highlighting organizations and individuals working to clean up these messes, a few of which you can find at the end of this article if you are looking for ways to get involved in marine conservation efforts related to oil exploration. Oil spills also refresh the tough conversations that need to be had regarding the safety and regulation of offshore oil exploration, though these are discussions that need to be had even when there is not an active oil spill. One of the most important components of oil spill response is the measurement of the effects oil can have on wildlife because what happens to the animals offshore could eventually happen to us and impact our communities, but some of these effects are not immediately visible.

Obvious and immediate effects an oil spill could have on wildlife can include ingestion and the all too familiar image of oil-doused birds, but, as mentioned previously, there are effects that linger well after the oil has dispersed. One finding after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is the way oil impacts shallow water fish, particularly in the development of the heart and lungs in younger animals. Such developmental effects include physical deformities and abnormality of function, likely causing significant wipeouts of fish eggs and deaths in young animals well after the spill ended. It should be noted, though, that most finned fish seem to remain unaffected by oil spills since oil remains at the surface and fish can be selective about their prey. Shellfish, however, tend to be more fixed and filter feed on whatever passes by, meaning they are more vulnerable to the harmful effects of oil and the oxygen depletion in the water after a spill. For communities that rely on seafood production to maintain their way of life, oil spills create a bigger mess than a large slick of oil. While seafood is generally inspected for safety in the United States by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s scientifically backed Seafood Inspection Program, local communities face financial hardship in the aftermath of large oil spills due to the inaccessibility of offshore fishing grounds and large die-offs that may occur as a result of a spill.

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