http://www.southernstudies.org/
REPORT - Gulf Dead Zone shows potential long-term impact of BP
disaster
By Chris Kromm
Over the last week, a curious media spin on the BP spill has taken
hold that suggests the impact of the disaster has been more hype
than reality. It started with conservative bloggers, and soon
rippled into Time, The Wall Street Journal and other major media,
who now suggest it's a "disaster that never materialized."
It's true that a handful of alarmists may have peddled doomsday
scenarios of Gulf apocalypse that were about as believable as a
Glenn Beck tirade about President Obama marching us to fascism.
But most scientists agree (with the possible exception of those
employed by BP) that it's far too early to write off the
possibility of long-term consequences from releasing 210 million
gallons of oil into the ocean.
What's more, it's clear that even the good news -- like the fact
that cleanup crews are finding less oil -- only raises more
questions about where the pollutants have gone, and how they could
be affecting the delicate ecology of Gulf waters.
A case in point: the growing Gulf Dead Zone. Since Facing South
first wrote about the link between the Gulf Dead Zone and the BP
oil spill on July 1, there's been growing coverage of the massive
area of water in the Gulf of Mexico that's so deprived of oxygen
that it's uninhabitable to sea life much of the year.
The leading culprit is thought to be mega-farms in the Midwest,
whose nitrate-filled fertilizers run off into the Mississippi
River and are carried to the Gulf, where they feed massive algae
blooms that starve the ocean of oxygen when they decompose (a
process known as hypoxia).
But scientists soon feared that the BP spill could make the Gulf
Dead Zone -- already the biggest in the world -- even larger,
thanks to methane pumping out of the failed Deepwater Horizon
well, which can have the same effect of boosting ocean microbes
that deplete the ocean of oxygen.
This week, the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium announced
that this year's Gulf Dead Zone was one of the biggest in history:
7,722 square miles, or just smaller than New Jersey.
Scientists say there's not enough data yet to say whether the Dead
Zone's growth is due to the BP spill, although in June a team from
Texas A&M University and the University of California at Santa
Barbara found "depletions of oxygen up to 30 percent" in areas
with elevated methane near the spill.
Indeed, this means that one of the very talking points used by
those who downplay the spill's impact -- that microbes are
naturally eating and breaking down Gulf pollutants -- signals a
growing threat to the Dead Zone.
According to Dr. Mandy Joye, a marine scientist at the University
of Georgia who has been studying the Gulf of Mexico for 15 years,
the microbes clearing away some of the oil, methane and other
pollutants are robbing oxygen from other marine life:
The degradation of this oil and gas being injected in the
gulf of Mexico is going to cause oxygen depletion in the water,
there's no way around it ... The microbial community is going to
break this down, but it doesn't come for free, it comes at the
expense of the oxygen budget of the system, and that's something
that's not easily corrected.
The upshot: While some of the most nightmarish scenarios of the BP
disaster's impact may not come true, it's inevitable that
releasing vast amounts of pollutants will alter the web of ocean
life in the Gulf -- and the consequences will likely be seen for
years to come.
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
