Scientists have struggled to evaluate the environmental damage to the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster ever since the blowout occurred and, almost a year after the massive oil spill began, the impact remains murky.
As The New York Times reports, the toll from the oil spill, the worst in the nation’s history, is unquestionably substantial. The 4.9 million barrels of spilled oil, along with the 1.84 million gallons of chemical dispersants used in the clean-up, harmed water, wildlife and wetlands.
However, in some respects the problem is more extreme than documented. Scientists can’t get to every dead bird, mammal and turtle, and they are working to determine the “multipliers” that offer some indication of the real number of killed animals in a given group.
For instance, scientists from the University of British Colombia estimate that for every killed cetacean — the animal group including whales and dolphins — that has been discovered, there are 50 more that died without the knowledge of human tabulators.
Smaller animals also suffered. Samantha B. Joye, a professor of marine science at the University of Georgia, said her team discovered dead bacteria, starfish, worms, coral and other bottom-feeding species in every one of the samples it took. “These are keystone species to the ecosystem, and we don’t know what will happen without them,” she said.
The harm to the Gulf Coast’s plant life also was severe. The amount of unhealthy brown marshland in the Mississippi Delta region has jumped by a factor of roughly five or more from a year before the disaster, according to researchers from the Northern Gulf Institute at Mississippi State University.
However, in many ways the impact has been less than it might have been. Because the spill occurred at high pressure a mile beneath the ocean’s surface, much of the oil and methane expected to overwhelm the gulf was quickly dispersed.
Furthermore, the Gulf’s unique geology also made the region less vulnerable than it might have been. Up to one million gallons of oil naturally seep up from the surface in a year, and the species of the region have developed a degree of adaptability to crude.
Nonetheless, many researchers caution against taking a sanguine view regarding the relatively low levels of chemical contamination. The contamination from clean-up dispersants might be low level, but it will be long-lasting, said Elizabeth Kujawinski, an associate scientist in chemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “We don’t know about how this affects living creatures in the deep water that can’t move, like corals,” she said.
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