Oil in plankton in Gulf of Mexico

A new study found oil in plankton from the Gulf of Mexico.

Does this mean that we're all gonna die tomorrow if we eat a fish from the Gulf? Or does it mean that the Gulf ecosystem is working to break down the oil? Let the debate begin.

But first a quick correction.

Studies of Gulf plankton show a chemical signature of oil. This is not the same as finding oil. It's oil-derived carbon. How did it get into the plankton? It likely happened because bacteria ate the oil and plankton ate the bacteria. Voila.

This does not mean that the plankton are contaminated. Quoting the author of the study:

"What we found was that the system works. It doesn't mean everything is OK and it doesn't mean that there isn't anything out there that isn't toxic. It just explains that the ecosystem is working to process this oil as if it were food."

The oil was treated as "fuel" to grow and reproduce, Graham said. "It's all biomass conversion. If I eat a cow that ate grass, I'm not eating grass; I'm eating what got converted into cow biomass."

Carbon is the element that forms the backbone of all life forms, so the evidence of the oil carbon in the zooplankton doesn't necessarily mean the food chain has become contaminated, Graham explained.

OK, this is a bit tricky. Carbon from oil is making it's way up the food chain. This means the oil has been digested and converted into other forms of carbon--like zooplankton tissue. It doesn't say anything about contamination with actual oil.

Will the world see this as evidence of oil metabolism (the correct view)? Or as evidence that the plankton were dripping in black goo that will poison our seafood (the wrong view)? We'll see, but I'm betting on the incorrect view.

Of course it's good to worry about what our food ate. If we're eating a cow that ate cow brains, we may find ourselves with a brain wasting disease. That would be bad.

So what about this oil-derived carbon in plankton? I don't think seafood with oil-derived carbon is the scariest thing on plates of most people. I'd worry more about mass-produced meat and what those animals have been eating. Give me a Gulf snapper any day.

BTW, I must offer the now-traditional context statement: the oil spill was bad-bad-bad, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. Some animals in the Gulf are contaminated, we know that. And we have to be careful about oil in Gulf seafood. But this carbon from oil story doesn't address that point. This study says that the ecosystem is working to metabolize the oil and that's a good thing.

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Biggest ocean oil spill ever

Almost nobody knows about the biggest ocean oil spill in history. Can you guess who is responsible?

Wrong, it's not the demon Big Oil, it's Gaia, the Green Goddess, Mother Nature. More oil is spilled naturally on earth than the amount of oil spilled by people.

As described on Green, a NY Times blog:

Natural seeps turned out to account for 600 kilotons annually, or 47 percent of the total. Consumption — from such activities as boating, urban runoff and industrial wastes — came in second at 480 kilotons, or 38 percent of the total. In third place were releases from such transportation-related activities as leaky pipes, tanker spills and cargo-hold washings. They amounted to 160 kilotons annually, or 12 percent of the total.

In last place were releases to the sea that tend to make headlines — those associated with oil extraction, like the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20. Globally, that kind of release amounted to 38 kilotons annually, or 3 percent of the total.

These figures are credible, they come from the US National Research Council.

Does this mean it's OK for Big Oil to be reckless with their drilling units? No, there are differences that matter in the timing and speed of oil leaking from Gaia's oil fields.

Size matters, and so does speed and style.

Biological systems are evolved to handle the the oil and gas coming from seeps, and many bugs and creatures live off the oil and gas, by breaking it down into food. But dump a tanker-load of oil on top of those "oil-eating" bugs and beasts, and they get overwhelmed. Natural oil seeps can be big enough to cause harm, but the harm tends to be small and localized.

Natural oil seeps (note that word--SEEP) leak oil and gas slowly, bit-by-bit, in a spread out array of sources all over the world. Sort of like solar energy spread out over the whole planet. But Big Oil's blowouts gush oil hard, fast, and huge, more like focusing sunlight with a lens into a destructive super-hot death beam.

Natural oil seeps are more like the drip, drip, drip of oil that leaks off humanity's infrastructure, roads, ships, ballast water exchange, etc. And this man-made drip, drip, drip, which is actually a bigger source of oil to the ocean than big oil spills, is still smaller than natural oil seeps. What is the effect of our slow leaks of oil? Because of the diffuse nature of these sources, they're less likely to swamp whole areas with oil, compared to a big spill. But in contained water bodies like Seattle's Puget Sound, they can have a big impact.

Based on the style of spill and harm the championship for causing the most harm from spilled oil goes to Big Oil and the Big Spills. At least, that's my guess. I'm not sure we can measure and prove who's the winner.

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Slippery science in the Gulf of Mexico

Researchers locked out of Gulf of Mexico research sites? Seriously? I can't believe this is happening when when we need all the information we can get about oil and dispersant impacts on the Gulf of Mexico.

What else is going on? How about seafood that is being approved for sale, even though some studies suggest that harmful contamination is present in some Gulf animals. Are people being adequately protected from contaminated seafood?

First, on the authorities stopping researchers from doing their work...I don't have the whole picture, but it's hard to imagine why researchers are being locked out of Gulf research sites. It seems unbelievable, crazy, and foolish:

Since the gulf oil spill first began gushing on April 20, Linda Hooper-Bui’s research group has repeatedly run up against the authorities. In May, a Fish and Wildlife Service officer confiscated insect samples that one of Hooper-Bui’s students had been collecting on a publicly accessible beach in southern Alabama. On research trips in Louisiana, her students have been stopped by sheriff’s deputies—one time after driving 150 miles—simply for attempting to study the ecological impact of oil and dispersants. Time and again, they were told that they couldn’t access their normal research sites unless they were working for BP or the government.

On the seafood contamination concern, here's a description of part of the FDA's seafood contamination test:

In order for an area to be considered acceptable for re-opening from a sensory standpoint a minimum of seventy percent (70%) of the expert assessors must find NO detectable petroleum or dispersant odor or flavor from each sample.

Is this real, 70%? I don't think I want to eat seafood that 30% of assessors think is oily. Yuck.

I'm not yet persuaded that everything's fine. It may be fine, but this stuff isn't reassuring.

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Bacteria eating oil in the Gulf of Mexico

A new study says we caught a break in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, an unknown bacteria was surprisingly good at breaking down the oil by eating it.

Researchers believe the light, sweet, nature of this particular crude, plus the Gulf's hardy adaptation to "frequent episodic leaks from natural seeps" may have contributed to its improved microbial ability to break the oil down.

Not that everything is fine, but at least we have some help from Mother Nature in dealing with the oil mess.

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Oily bottom syndrome

Are you curious where all that oil went? You know, the oil that is "gone" according to experts from BP and their supporters in government. Now we know where to find some of it...look down and you'll see Oily Bottom Syndrome.

Always embarassing and probably toxic, having your bottom splotched with oil is not a good thing. News from the Gulf of Mexico says that the Gulf has Oily Bottom Syndrome "further east than previously expected and at levels toxic to marine life."

Initial findings from a new survey of the Gulf conclude that dispersants may have sent the oil to the ocean floor, where it has turned up at the bottom of an undersea canyon within 40 miles of the Florida Panhandle. Plankton and other organisms showed a "strong toxic response" to the crude, according to researchers from the University of South Florida.

We knew those dispersants were risky, but oil companies and the government like dispersants because they put some of the oil out of sight.

Now it's coming back into the public eye, thanks to good work by scientists. But public attention has shifted, and the news is much smaller today than in the early days. No doubt BP thinks shifting some of the oil spill disaster news to August is a success.

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Gulf seafood safe to eat

"...despite millions of gallons of oil and chemical dispersants gushing into the water, federal officials said Tuesday."

This according to the Panama City (Florida) NewsHerald.com

The safety of Gulf seafood is a big subject that will grow in importance. I hope the conversation is more informative and credible than this type of blanket assurance without anything to back it up.

In fact, things may not be quite so rosy. According to the Congressional Research Service, a highly credible source of information, there may be contamination risks that have not yet been fully studied following the oil and chemical spills caused by Hurrican Katrina.

There is concern over the long-term contamination of fisheries through the food chain. Toxins released to the environment through flooding may accumulate through the food chain into the tissues of fish. Bioaccumulative toxins such as lead and mercury have been detected in floodwaters that are now being pumped in Lake Pontchartrain. The timeline for bioaccumulation is uncertain, and depends on the amount of toxins released, where they were released, and whether the release was in specific areas or diffuse.

Another credible report found continued risk of chronic low level contamination of seafood in Alaska, 18 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill there.

Sadly, there is much more to come on the issue of Gulf seafood contamination. We need thorough studies and complete transparency, the public has a right to know and the Gulf seafood industry will only thrive in a climate of open and full disclosure.

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Tanker spills 11 million gallons of oil

Twenty years ago, the Exxon Valdez crashed and spilled lots of oil, and the world was forever changed.

The ecosystems remain affected, although the biggest effects are over. The world was outraged and demanded action--what did we get?

Are we safer from oil pollution than 20 years ago?

Most people don't know that routine ship operations leak more oil into our oceans than spills. And we're making little progress in solving that problem.

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How safe are oil tankers, really?

An interview with a responsible official after an oil tanker accident and oil spill (humor).

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John McCain says fish love oil rigs

Here's John McCain talking about fish. There's some truth to his claim that fish love oil rigs, and it is great to see fish mentioned on the Presidential stage.

But watch the rest of this clip and see a Fox News report on how well the oil infrastructure held up under stormy weather, along with a personal endorsement of the message by a fish at the end.



Hat tip: Effect Measure

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