When Bonny Schumaker flew her small plane over the Gulf of Mexico to conduct a survey of whale sharks, her search instead turned up a massive oil slick that stretched for miles on the surface. The oil appeared to be emanating from the exact site of BP’s blown-out Macondo well, which gushed oil for months and created the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
CBS correspondent Dr. Debbye Turner Bell traveled to the Gulf Coast recently to talk with scientists and fishermen about post-spill recovery – what’s happening in the Gulf now and how the future is shaping up for the people and businesses that draw their living from Gulf waters. What she reported back were stories of grave concern about the fish being caught in and around the areas hit by the oil spill.
BP crews are returning to the Mississippi coast to begin a new oil-cleanup effort as clumps and mats of dark oily sludge wash ashore. The barrier islands that form a broken chain about 10-12 miles off the Mississippi coast are bearing the brunt of the oil that continues to contaminate beaches, surf, and deeper water.
Researchers led by the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, announced they will receive nearly $8 million to study the effects of the BP oil spill disaster on seafood from the Gulf of Mexico. The five-year grant is funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health and Science. In addition to UT, the project will involve researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Louisiana State University and the University of Arizona. Community agencies also will be enlisted to help with the study.
Communities and business harmed by BP’s oil spill have recovered and business is booming, according to a myopic BP memo sent to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF). The document advises the fund’s manager to stop paying on claims made for future losses because, BP argues, the Gulf of Mexico is healed and anyone harmed by last year’s devastating spill won’t need future assistance from the $20-billion relief fund.
People have questioned the safety of Gulf seafood ever since BP flooded the water with crude oil and methane gas a year ago, then sprayed and pumped the spill with unprecedented levels of chemical dispersants. The oil disaster hit just as shrimping season was about to begin, closing once-fertile fishing grounds and drawing attention to the scope of the spill. Were shrimpers and fishermen out of work just for the season, or would the environmental and economic impacts linger for years?
One year ago today BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig was consumed by flames, its weakening frame on the verge of collapsing into the sea it fed upon. Today, that image provides a fitting metaphor for thousands of small businesses in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle that continue to struggle with severe declines in revenues ever since BP’s massive oil slick overtook this part of the Gulf. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, many small business owners in the tourism and seafood industry fear the year-old oil spill will put them out of business soon if visitors don’t return.
Oceanographers and scientists have been warning that only time will reveal how much damage BP’s massive oil spill and its use of chemical oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico have done to the environment and marine ecology. This week a troubling sign has emerged in the form of an astonishingly large mass of floating dead fish just west of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s newly released fisheries report finds New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, Alaska, remaining at the top in 2009 for value and amount of fish landed, but the inclusion of several Gulf fisheries among last year’s top ten underscores just how much was lost in 2010 – for both the Gulf Coast and the national economy as a whole — in the wake of BP’s oil spill.
