Can you handle the truth about the Gulf oil spill?

The Gulf oil spill wasn't as bad as feared, according to Margaret Wente writing in the Globe and Mail. And if she's right, I think most people can't handle the truth.

She thinks we prefer the story of evil and so we can't accept the reality that the oil spill was bad but not that bad:

...it’s worth asking why we’re so determined to cling to the narrative of catastrophe. I think it’s because we saw the spill as a giant morality tale: evil versus good, rapacious oil interests versus the environment, greedy consumers (that’s us) versus oil-soaked pelicans and the unspoiled natural world. The visuals were devastating, and the coverage was relentless. The media took turns hyping the disaster. They had a lot invested in this storyline and, when it took an unexpected happy turn, they couldn’t handle it. They couldn’t even see it.

Luckily for us, they were wrong. “Nature’s resilience is truly magnificent,” writes Carl Safina. And that’s a good thing.

I don't know enough about the oil spill to say whether she's right. It's probably too soon to tell, and the real losses do matter even if some animals are thriving. Human systems will suffer for a long time, thanks to skepticism about the cleanliness of Gulf seafood. But I do think she's right that Armageddon didn't come for ocean ecosystems.

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Make an oily mess, earn a bonus

Do you get a raise and a bonus when you screw up bigtime? If not, try a new job in the oil industry.

The CEO of the company that owned the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico got a raise and a bonus. And the company compounded the public relations error by declaring last year their "the best year in safety performance in our company's history." No wonder Transocean Ltd. found themselves on the front page of CNN, and BBC. Next stop, the Onion.

Just in case you want to look back and laugh while Transocean executives take the oil spill to the bank:

Du café renversé chez BP - Vidéos

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Wild Gulf of Mexico seafood

Want to know where your red snapper dinner came from? If you're lucky enough to buy a Gulf of Mexico fish, you can now trace it back to the fishing boat that caught your dinner. Wow. All thanks to that nice blue and white tag on the fish (right).

What do you want to know? Just click and learn:

Track your Fish

Finally, answers to your Gulf of Mexico seafood questions - and they're just a quick click away. Simply enter the unique number from your Gulf Wild seafood tag to access the important credentials of your specific fish:
-Captain's bio and photo
-The harvesting vessel's name and background
-Fish house and city where your seafood was landed
-NOAA Grid ID - where in the Gulf your fish was caught
-Specific fish type
Gulf Wild stands ready to provide real-time answers about your seafood like no one has before.

Look who's showing the world how to bring seafood to customers in the 21st century. Red snapper and grouper fishermen from the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn't that long ago that these guys were arguing for more overfishing, despite a decades-long overfishing debacle that meant there were few fish left.

Now, Gulf of Mexico fishermen are enjoying the fruits of more fish in the ocean and more fish to catch, and they're innovating to make their seafood more than just the best-tasting seafood.

Through Gulf Wild, Gulf fishermen are tagging fish when caught, and tracing that information all the way through the supply chain.

I'm impressed.

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Oily bottom in the Gulf of Mexcio

Spilled oil remains a problem in the Gulf of Mexico. A new scientific study found ongoing problems with oil coating the ocean bottom and killing animals. Ugh.

As if that's not enough, too many baby dolphins seem to be dying in the region.

Meanwhile, deepwater oil drilling will resume, based on "proof" that we can do it safely. Forgive me for being skeptical. I know oil drilling will continue, but the idea that we can do it without spills is farcical.

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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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An end to fishing is oil spill's gift to the Gulf

What is a bigger effect on fish in the Gulf of Mexico...

The Gulf oil spill?
The Gulf oil no-fishing zone?

Some scientists are finding increases in fish and shrimp, and they think an end to fishing may help more than the oil hurt.

This is the proverbial silver lining in a black cloud. Similar ghoulish benefits have been seen when fishing was closed for some very bad reasons, like fish getting bigger during World War 2 in areas where fear of submarines caused fishermen to stop fishing, creating a so-called war dividend.

Don't get me wrong, the oil spill is bad-bad-bad. But it's amazing to see what happens when we stop fishing for a while. I'd like to see the no-fishing experiment done without an oil spill.

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Gulf oil: the stink that keeps on stinking

Just when you're starting to feel better about the Gulf of Mexico, new reasons to worry. First, claims that the FDA is using weaker standards for oil-tainted seafood compared to past oil spills.

More bad news, the chemical goo used to disperse (hide) oil in the Gulf seems likely to make the oil last longer.

"Some experts have also said that the use of Corexit (dispersant) has prolonged by decades the presence of toxic crude oil, because the dispersant sinks the oil beneath the ocean surface, where it cannot be quickly broken down by sun, waves and microbes."

Delightful, I feel better already.

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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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Is Gulf of Mexico seafood safe to eat?

Many people are asking this question, and seafood sales are down in the region. Some 15% to 25% of people surveyed are negative about seafood and worried about safety, the numbers vary depending on how the question is asked.

In response, the Florida Department of Agriculture

is now rolling out Florida Gulf Safe stickered logos to restaurants, retailers and seafood wholesalers. Some restaurants have already put the logo on menu inserts, and wholesalers can place the logo on their packages.

“This is not a certification program,” said May. “It means that, from everything we know, it is safe.”

But some fishermen have doubts about the safety of Gulf of Mexico seafood. Fishermen from 4 Gulf of Mexico states held a press conference recently to question what they believe is the premature re-opening of fishing grounds. They issued a press release that said:

"Gulf Coast fishermen do not want to sell tainted seafood but are being forced, by the premature opening of inland and gulf waters to commercial fishing, to choose between a clean gulf or their livelihood," according to a press release announcing the event. "Fishermen would rather work cleaning the severely damaged gulf than selling tainted seafood.
...
Concerns over the safety of Gulf seafood deepened last week after crabbers in coastal Mississippi pulled up dozens of crabs with black-tainted gills—something they'd never seen before. Crabs are bottom feeders, so the presence of oil in their tissues suggests the pollution is now covering the sea floor."

There is a lot being done to ensure Gulf seafood is safe, but that's a difficult task. Testing and tracking everything that's caught is impossible, and the technology available sometimes come down to the good 'ol "sniff test" (does it smell like oil?)

Industry promoters believe that Gulf seafood is safe and the only threat is people being overly alarmed. They are mounting a photo-op type campaign in response, and planning to meet with Obama in Washington DC, bringing a 30 foot po' boy with a "bipartisan mix of shrimp and oysters.

There is more to come on this issue, I think it'll be around for years to come. Among other things, it's a confidence in government issue, and for those who attack the government as being "the enemy," we're all now living with the consequences of such attacks.

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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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BP tries to buy up Gulf scientists

If you're BP and you're worried about the damage you've done to the Gulf of Mexico, what's your first response? Would you hire all the scientists in the Gulf so that they couldn't testify against you in court?

Stories are circulating that say BP is doing exactly that, searching for prominent scientists who will work for BP and thus not be available to work against BP.

According to ai.com:

For the last few weeks, BP has been offering signing bonuses and lucrative pay to prominent scientists from public universities around the Gulf Coast to aid its defense against spill litigation.

BP PLC attempted to hire the entire marine sciences department at one Alabama university, according to scientists involved in discussions with the company's lawyers. The university declined because of confidentiality restrictions that the company sought on any research.

The Press-Register obtained a copy of a contract offered to scientists by BP. It prohibits the scientists from publishing their research, sharing it with other scientists or speaking about the data that they collect for at least the next three years.

Nice move, BP, really looks like you're trying to solve problems with this attempt to buy scientists.

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Sea turtle egg rescue in the oily Gulf

Scientists and turtle advocates are busy in the Gulf of Mexico, rescuing sea turtle eggs and taking them outside the oily zone. Without this rescue the baby turtles are likely to die from getting oiled, or from getting burned as humans burn oil.

Hope runs high for the first 56 baby turtles that were just released into oil-free areas.

Some scientists worry that it's hope and not data guiding decisions about turtles. It's true we don't know everything about baby turtles, so this could be a mistake. Maybe they're just getting released to starve or become bird food. Good intentions are no guarantee of good results. I suppose it makes sense to try something.

How about trying BP executives in a court of their peers (see photo, bottom).

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Surreal scene flying over Gulf oil disaster

This defies description. Like a scene from a sick imagination, the ocean is a living hell. Pink and purple slicks, dolphins and a sperm whale surfacing through colored slop in their death throes.

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Swiss view on the Gulf oil spill

Disgust about poor handling of oil--from the land of trains that run on time.

Du café renversé chez BP - Videos streaming

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Oil doesn't just kill, it maims

What can we expect from the Gulf oil disaster? Oil is the pollution that hurts you once, and then keeps on hurting. Just as Nuka, the sea otter oiled in Alaska when she was a newborn pup. She's a swimming example of all the things that can go wrong with a sea otter, or at least most of them.

This story in the Seattle Times describes the woes of an oiled sea otter pup 20 years later and a whole array of other harms caused by oil, in addition to the obvious bad feather days it causes for the highly visible oiled birds. Oiled eggs, oiled food, etc. Stay tuned, we'll be hearing about these effects for a long time.

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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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Oil spill cleanup doing more harm than good?

People don't like messes, and there's a natural tendency to want to clean up spilled oil. But evidence has accumulated showing that so-called cleanups can do more harm than good.

As BP struggles with a stained public image, like Exxon in Alaska in 1989, executives will do anything to appear busy and to reduce the bad visuals of oily beaches and birds. They'll do anything, including some things they might ought not do.

What are they doing, besides ducking blame? Spraying "dispersants" which are toxic chemicals designed to disperse the oil into smaller masses. The only problem is that massive, unprecedented amounts of dispersants are being sprayed into Gulf waters, in a giant toxicology experiment.

More than 250,000 gallons of dispersant have been applied both by air and underwater at the Deepwater Horizon spill site, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed. What is the chemistry of oil dispersants? Interesting question, and we don't know the answer because the stuff is a trade secret. Probably some sort of toxic organic hydrocarbon, but exactly what is unknown.

Though considered by many experts as the lesser of two evils, the environmental impact of so much dispersant at one site remains “widely unknown,” Environmental Protection Agency officials admit. And the value of dispersants is questioned by some scientists. The stuff may be used mostly to hide the oil from public view by breaking it up into smaller globs.

Then there's the "cleanup" itself. Attempts to physically remove oil from beaches was widely criticized in the Exxon Valdez oil cleanup. Some studies indicate that cleanup did more harm than good.

An important observation that resulted from the Exxon Valdez oil spill was that natural cleaning processes, on both sheltered and exposed beaches, were in many cases very effective at degrading oil. It took longer for some sections of shoreline to recover from some of the invasive cleaning methods (hot water flushing in particular) than from the oiling itself.

According to one source, the Exxon Valdez "cleanup" was more than a big effort though. It was a big mistake, John Robinson, the chief scientist at the spill for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. "The aggressiveness of the cleanup in the end contributed to more damage than the oil did," he believes. Nine strips of beach were left untouched as an experiment, and those nine beaches look better today than the swept ones, where whatever was alive was cooked to death in superhot water.

Argh, the oil spill is bad enough, and adding a so-called "cleanup" may be adding additional harm. As they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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Ultra-chill fish

Zen and the art of being a fish reaches new heights with the filming of a live oarfish in the deep ocean. I mean, the oarfish isn't new, but us knowing is new.

Big, strange, and extremely chill, watch this oarfish demonstrate the economy of motion typical of the deep sea. Even when approached by a blazing light unlike anything found in the deep ocean, the oarfish moves only by undulating its dorsal fin.

The photo above shows you how big an oarfish can get, now click the link above for video of Mr. Chill while underwater.

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Waves of rays

Don't miss these fantastic photos by Sandra Crittenden, published in the UK Telegraph. Rhinoptera bonasus, aka Cownose rays, make long migrations around the Atlantic in huge schools. No one quite knows why, but this is one fish whose populations are increasing, perhaps because the sharks that eat them are fewer and further between.

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