Post #331,018
8/8/10 3:03:25 PM
|
More.
http://www.huffingto...kin_n_674738.html
Citing Froomkin - http://www.huffingto...nce_n_664298.html
Scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico, the first clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they can easily enter the foodchain.
Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them "in almost all" of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. -- more than 300 miles of coastline -- said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.
And now, a team of researchers from Tulane University using infrared spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of the blobs has detected the signature for Corexit, the dispersant BP used so widely in the Deepwater Horizon.
The stuff's going to be floating around and in the near-surface environment for a long time.... :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
|
Post #331,049
8/9/10 8:34:39 AM
|
Even more.
http://www.mcclatchy...-spill-might.html
[...]
ÂIf you consider the volume, Ronald J. Kendall, chairman of environmental toxicology at Texas Tech University, told the New York Times earlier this month, Âwe could see re-oiling for years to come.Â
The economic effect has been estimated as high as $23 billion.
Every oil spill is different, but the thread that unites Valdez in 1989, the Ixtoc in Mexico in 1979, the Amoco Cadiz in France in 1978 and two Cape Cod spills in the late 1960s and early 1970s is just how long oil can linger in the environment, hidden in out-of-the-way spots, the Times reported.
Sea otters digging in sediment for food are still being exposed in Alaska based on liver studies, fiddler crabs three decades after the Cape Cod spill move erratically and are slow to react to predators and Mango groves along the shores in areas of Mexico are less thick.
Dig a deep plug out of a marsh oiled four decades ago near West Falmouth, Mass., and it smells of diesel, officials said.
In the Gulf, on top of everything else, the EPA has said that cleanup efforts have damaged the environment.
ÂAbsolutely nothing you do to respond to an oil spill is without impacts of its own, said Lisa Jackson, administrator of the EPA, whether itÂs burning, vacuuming or digging.
[...]
ÂIt will be a year or two before we know how many whale sharks are damaged, or how many dolphins have died, he said. Some of the threat is to microscopic animals, some is to reproductive systems.
It will be two years before scientists can get a reading on juvenile fish.
Whale sharks sink when they die, and the worst of the spill was in the middle of their summer feeding range.
[...]
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
|
Post #331,071
8/9/10 9:09:58 PM
|
And not just the oil
http://www.huffingto...nce_n_664298.html
Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them "in almost all" of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. ... a team of researchers from Tulane University using infrared spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of the blobs has detected the signature for Corexit
Still waiting on final confirmation, but hard to imagine what else it may be.
|
