BP Oil Spill Is Much Worse Than People Think, Scientists Say

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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/29/3465261/bp-oil-spill-coral-reefs/


Marine reef ecologist Scott Porter holds coral samples he removed from an oil rig in waters, Monday, June 7, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice, La.

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ThinkProgress spoke with Fisher to find out more about what the study says, what it means, and whether or not the findings spell trouble for the future of the Gulf.

TP: Your research noted that not all coral reefs surrounding the Macondo well were impacted by the spill. Can you explain, in your own words, what you found with regard to the corals that were actually impacted?

CF: The corals we found that were impacted were all within about 22 km of the spill site, and we could tell they were impacted by the appearance. Partially dead colonies were covered with growths of things that don’t normally grow on coral.
We know this impact was linked to the Macondo well, and that has to do with another study that we did in 2010. We found one [coral] site in 2010, and when we found it, the corals still had brown goo on it. The oil on those matched the chemical fingerprint of the oil from BP’s spill. We returned to that site and have followed the progress. So we know what a coral looks like that was impacted in 2010 looks like in 2011, and so on.

You don’t see this anywhere else, so all the rest of the corals that we found had the exact same characteristics. Things happened in a very predictable way.

How does your research compare to what we already knew about the BP spill’s impact on coral in the Gulf?

Before this study, we had only found one impacted site that was 14 km southwest of the spill. Now we’ve found two more, one of which is 22 km to the east. So this defines a larger circle of impact.