Asphyxiation

Dead Zones, Oil Sediment Found 100km From MC252 Site

NOAA Report

A new report from the Joint Analysis Group (JAG), which includes the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that oxygen levels have dropped by about 20% below average in locations around the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an unrelated development, a team of researchers has found evidence (see photo, right) of precipitated oil on the seafloor below causing significant harm to organisms there.

The zones of depleted oxygen, called "sags" extend some 100 kilometres from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead. . .

Biogeochemist Samantha Joye, from the University of Georgia in Athens, and her colleagues have found a layer of oilburied about three centimetres deep in a canyon some 30 kilometres from the wellhead. They also spotted dead worms, shrimp and other bottom-dwelling organisms in the same region. . .

“It looks like the benthic infauna [bottom burrowing creatures] were nuked by the oil snow storm,” she adds. “The only things alive in the oil impacted sediments are the microbial flora, and they seem to be happy with all the carbon to eat.”

I hate to say it, but I told you so. Dead zones created by BP's oil disaster over 60 miles from the MC252 site, sea life "nuked," oxygen levels that are only suitable for microbes and no longer plants or animals. More evidence is being uncovered each day that the damage to life in the Gulf of Mexico is spreading and it will work its way up the food chain. Nature is very resilient; let's just hope that we at the top are not affected in large numbers.