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But significant declines in key health signs on the sea floor have researchers concerned.
Tulane University’s Jessica Henkel sets up a net to catch migrating birds as part of research looking for long-term, not immediately lethal effects from the BP PLC oil spill.
AP photo
BAY JIMMY, La. — Scientists judge the overall health of the Gulf of Mexico as nearly back to normal one year after the BP oil spill, but with glaring blemishes that restrain their optimism about nature’s resiliency, an Associated Press survey of researchers shows.
More than three dozen scientists grade the Gulf’s big picture health a 68 on average, using a 1-to-100 scale. What’s remarkable is that that’s just a few points below the 71 the same researchers gave last summer when asked what grade they would give the ecosystem before the spill. And it’s an improvement from the 65 given back in October.
At the same time, scientists are worried. They cite significant declines in key health indicators such as the sea floor, dolphins and oysters. In interviews, dozens of Gulf experts emphasized their concerns, pointing to the mysterious deaths of hundreds of young dolphins and turtles, strangely stained crabs and dead patches on the sea floor.
Expert: Jury still out
The survey results mirror impressions Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, gave on the health of the Gulf in an interview Thursday.
The Gulf is “much better than people feared, but the jury is out about what the end result will be,” she said. “It’s premature to conclude that things are good … There are surprises coming up — we’re finding dead baby dolphins.”
Just as it was before the April 20 accident when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, ultimately spewing 172 million gallons of oil, the Gulf continues to be a place of contradictions: The surface looks as if nothing ever happened while potentially big problems are hidden deep below the surface, in hard-to-get-to marshes and in the slow-moving food web. Some may not even be known for years.
“When considering the entire Gulf of Mexico, I think the natural restoration of the Gulf is back to close to where it was before the spill,” said Wes Tunnell at Texas A&M University, who wrote a scientific advisory report for the federal arbitrator who is awarding money to residents and businesses because of the oil spill. Tunnell’s grades are typical. He says the Gulf’s overall health before the spill was a 70; he gives it a 69 now.
If that pre-spill grade isn’t impressive, it’s because the Gulf has long been an environmental victim— oil from drilling and natural seepage, overfishing, hurricanes and a huge oxygen-depleted dead zone caused by absorbing 40 percent of America’s farm and urban runoff from the Mississippi River.
Today, a dozen scientists give the Gulf as good a grade as they did before the spill. One of those is Louisiana State University professor Ed Overton, a veteran of oil spills. He described a recent trip to Gulf Shores, Ala.: “I walked a half-mile down the beach and there wasn’t a tar ball in sight. It was as pretty as I’ve ever seen it.”
In the survey, some categories, such as red snapper and king mackerel, even average out to higher grades than before the spill, mostly because months of partial fishing bans have helped populations thrive.
While that sounds good, the average grades for the sea floor plunged from 68 pre-spill to a failing grade of 57 now. Dolphins initially seemed to be OK, but as more carcasses than usual kept washing up — almost 300 since the spill — the grade fell to 66, compared to a pre-spill 75. Oysters, always under siege, dropped 10 points, crabs dropped 6 points. And the overall food web slid from 70 before the spill to 64 now.
“Everything may be fine in some places, but definitely not fine everywhere,” said University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye who found dead patches of oiled sea bottom in expeditions near the busted well where 11 men lost their lives. “The oil isn’t gone; it’s just not where we can see it.”
Joye said before the oil spill she would have given the sea floor an “A” grade of 90. Now she gives it a 30. Overall, Joye, who has been one of the more hands-on researchers exploring Gulf damage, said its health has plunged from an 80 before the spill to a 50 now, but she was the most pessimistic of the researchers.
In five different expeditions, the last one in December, she and her colleagues took 250 cores of the sea floor and traveled 2,600 square miles. She says much of the invisible oil in the water and on the sea bottom has been chemically fingerprinted and traced to the BP spill. She also has pictures of oil-choked bottom-dwelling creatures like crabs and brittle stars — starfish-like critters that are normally bright orange but now are pale and dead.
This is hidden from view. Eugene Turner, an LSU wetlands scientist, has looked at marshes in Louisiana’s Barataria basin, and found oil buried in the mud and sand.
“You can’t smell it. You can’t see it. It’s not this big black scum out there, but it’s there,” Turner said.
At this point, the oil is only obvious in a couple of places — with Bay Jimmy the worst-hit. Today, a crust of oil still lines miles of the outer fringe of marsh in the bay, a remote spot deep visited by the occasional fisherman and oil worker.
Still, it’s nothing compared to the black gunk stuck on beaches and marshes last summer or the multi-colored slicks so massive they could be tracked by satellite. Those images, along with the pictures of pelicans and seagulls with gobs of oil oozing down their beaks, are now history.
Despite the picture on the surface, Dana Wetzel at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, adds: “Anyone who says the Gulf is fine is being precipitous…. It’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind, but in my humble opinion this is not over.”