Government is making all effort to assure that eating gulf seafood is safe and the oil is disappearing from the waters. But three new reports state that most of the oil remains and presents a threat to marine life. Five prominent marine scientists calculate that 70 percent to 79 percent of the oil that flowed into the gulf from the Deepwater Horizon well continues to taint the ecosystem.
Samantha Joye, a marine sciences professor at the University of Georgia and co-author of the report, said that they have to be very careful about making conclusions of where the oil is and what it’s doing, because the likelihood is that a lot of it has sedimented to the bottom. Joye was one of the first to study the Gulf of Mexico’s underwater oil plumes, barely visible droplets discovered to have traveled miles from the rig.
Despite the disappearance of most of the spilled oil from view on the surface, University of South Florida scientists have found oil from the Deepwater Horizon well 40 miles from Florida’s Panhandle, in seafloor sediments of the DeSoto Canyon. The scientists have tested water samples of gulf and found that phytoplankton, the tiny plants at the base of the food chain, and bacteria “express a strong toxic response” to the contaminated water.
The authors also wrote that trace amounts of mercury, cadmium and lead found in crude oil can accumulate in fish tissues over time, potentially working their way up the food chain to fish people like to eat, including tuna, mackerel and swordfish.
