The catastrophe may have faded from the headlines, but the oil spill from the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil in April 2010 probably is one of the worst environmental disasters in American history. During the spill, day after day, thousands of gallons of crude oil spewed into some of our most fragile ecosystems as we watched in despair and outrage. More than 200,000,000 gallons gushed out before the well was capped on July 15 and two months later finally considered “effectively dead” However, the ecological and economic consequences will be with us for decades or even life times.
The Gulf of Mexico is – or was – considered one of the ecologically and economically productive waters in the world: mangrove forests and coral reefs, immense oyster beds, shoreline forests…Here the intricate web of life consists of everything between plankton and sperm whales. Here five species of sea turtles come to nest, the Atlantic Blue Fin tuna spawns only here, the manatees and red snappers live here, brown pelicans and herons nest here…And thousands and thousands of humans depend on these waters for their livelihoods.
Yet it took three months for BP, the government, and all experts (and maybe no-to-so-much-experts) to figure out how to stop the gushing of oil, and two more months to “kill” it. Today scientists are trying to understand how much oil remains in the water as well as the effects of the chemical dispersants meant to break up the oil. We know that BP used at least 2 million gallons of the toxic dispersants Corexit to break down the oil to smaller particles even though many scientists warned that the dispersant would make the recovery effort even harder and the toxicity greater.
Do this experiment at home: Put some oil (any cooking oil is fine) in a glass of water. The oil will float on the water and there is very little mixing. Now add some dishwashing liquid and then shake it all around (like wind and waves would do). You will see the little of drops of oil interdisperse with the water. This is what we had in the Gulf of Mexico. The environmental impact of the combination of oil under high pressure, at great depth (5,000 ft.) and the dispersant is uncertain and many are worried how this will impact the layers of life in the Gulf… According to Center for Biological Diversity there is nothing to compare this oil spill to measure its ecological impact (Greenblatt, 2010).
What we do know is that oil spill is affecting every habitat of the Gulf and that the future is uncertain.
Questions to address:
What can you learn from this disaster and what can we as a nation learn? How are we going to move forward? How can we avoid another catastrophe like this?
