http://www.science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2010-news/Fisher11-2010

5 November 2010—On a research ship in the Gulf of Mexico on Election Day this week, seven miles south-west of the site of the Deep Water Horizon oil-spill, a team of scientists discovered a community of corals that includes many recently dead colonies and others that clearly are dying. “We discovered a community of coral that has been impacted fairly recently by something very toxic,” said the chief scientist on the cruise, Charles Fisher, who is a professor of biology at Penn State University and a member of the research team that selected the site for study.

Fisher said the research team encountered a colony of the hard coral species Madrepora that appeared to be unhealthy on 2 November 2010 at a depth of 1400 meters. “Although some branches of the coral colony appeared normal, other branches clearly were covered in a brown material, apparently sloughing tissue, and were producing abundant mucous,” Fisher said. The scientists sampled pieces of this hard coral and of its immediate environment then, about 400 meters away, they found a seriously stricken community of soft corals.

“Within minutes of our arrival at this site, it was evident to the biologists on board that this site was unlike any others that we have seen over the course of hundreds of hours of studying the deep corals in the Gulf of Mexico over the last decade with remotely-operated-vehicles (ROVs) and submersibles,” Fisher said. “We found that extensive portions of most of the coral colonies were either recently dead or were dying. Most of the soft coral sea fans had extensive areas that were bare of tissue, covered with brown material, and/or had tissue falling off the skeleton. Many of the colonies appeared recently dead, with no living coral tissue, still covered with decaying material, and also with a notable lack of colonization by other marine life, as would be expected on coral skeletons that had been dead for long periods of time,” Fisher said.

View the photo album of all the high-resolution images available about this research.
http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/photos/research-photos/biology/fisher-photos

The scientists also found that many of the brittle stars that are the typical symbiotic partners of these types of corals also appeared to be very unhealthy. “Many of the dead and dying coral colonies had discolored and immobile brittle stars — a kind of starfish — still attached,” Fisher said.

The team took a variety of samples that will be analyzed for the presence of hydrocarbons and for molecular evidence of genetic damage and physiological stress that could give direct evidence of exposure to oil or dispersants from the Deep Water Horizon disaster. However, Fisher said it is possible that lab results might not be able to provide any new information. “For example, a plume of toxic dispersant or oil blowing through this community could have caused damage that resulted in the slow death of the corals without leaving any trace on the sea floor near the corals,” Fisher said. “No one yet knows if the signature of whatever toxin killed these corals can be found in their skeletons after the tissue sloughs off. No one even knows if dispersant accumulates in the tissues that it kills.”

However, “The compelling evidence that we collected constitutes a smoking gun,” Fisher said. “The circumstantial evidence is extremely strong and compelling because we have never seen anything like this — and we have seen a lot; the visual data for recent and ongoing death are crystal clear and consistent over at least 30 colonies; the site is close to the Deep Water Horizon; the research site is at the right depth and direction to have been impacted by a deep-water plume, based on NOAA models and empirical data; and the impact was detected only a few months after the spill was contained.”

“The proximity of the site to the disaster, the depth of the site, the clear evidence of recent impact, and the uniqueness of the observations all suggest that the impact we have found is linked to the exposure of this community to either oil, dispersant, extremely depleted oxygen, or some combination of these or other water-borne effects resulting from the spill,” Fisher said.

A portion of one of the impacted corals and two attached brittle starfish. Living tissue is orange and most of the skeleton is bare or covered by brown flocculent material. The brittle starfish are normal symbiotic partners of this type of coral. The brittle star on the left shows a more normal coloration for this species and the individual on the right is bleached white and much more tightly wrapped around the branch than normal. Both starfish were uncharacteristically immobile.

Credit: Lophelia II 2010; NOAA OER and BOEMRE

The research is funded jointly by NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement through TDI Brooks International. The research team, which includes scientists from Penn State University, Temple University, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the U.S. Geological Survey, Louisiana State University, Florida State University, the Past Foundation, and C&C Technologies, has been using the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown and the National Deep Submergence Facility ROV Jason II in its studies of the coral ecosystems of the deep Gulf of Mexico. The scientists have carefully mapped and imaged the entire coral community with high-definition video and still cameras so it can be revisited during a scheduled cruise with the submersible Alvin in December, and so that it also can be monitored into the future.

[ Barbara K. Kennedy ]

CONTACTS at Penn State:
Charles Fisher, Expedition Chief Scientist, deep-sea biologist: cfisher@psu.edu, 814-883-8869 (cell)
Barbara Kennedy (PIO): 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu

CONTACT at Temple University:
Erik Cordes, chief scientist from the first leg of the expedition and co-PI, assistant professor, deep-sea biologist, ecordes@temple.edu

CONTACT at the U.S. Geological Survey:
Cheryl Morrison, cmorrison@usgs.gov, 304-839-3066 (cell)

CONTACT at the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration:
Keeley Belva, Keeley.Belva@noaa.gov

CONTACT at U. S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement: Leanne Bullin, Leann.Bullin@boemre.gov

MORE INFORMATION

•NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research:
oceanexplorer.noaa.gov
•Lophelia II 2010: Oil Seeps and Deep Reefs Mission:
oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/10lophelia/welcome.html

http://washingtonindependent.com/102166/why-the-oil-spill-hasnt-been-a-major-midterm-election-issue

Washington Indpendent: Why the Oil Spill Hasn’t Been a Major Midterm Election Issue

By ANDREW RESTUCCIA 11/1/10 12:03 PM
Fred Grimm at The Miami Herald has a great column today on how the oil spill has not been a driving factor in the midterm elections in Florida and around the country.
He traces the oil spill narrative roughly like this: Outcry about the environmental effects of the spill turned into concerns about the moratorium on drilling, which, when the moratorium was lifted, turned into everybody moving on to something else.

At first, it seemed like an inevitability that the oil spill would become a major issue in the midterm elections. And in some cases it was – Grimm points to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s early Senate campaign rhetoric on the environmental impacts of the spill, and I’ve written before about how Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) zeroed in on the drilling moratorium.

But oil spill rhetoric has faded significantly for a number of reasons. The first is time. It’s been more than six months since the spill, and the incident rarely gets front-page billing these days. The second, as Grimm points out, is the administration’s decision to overturn the moratorium. The decision took some of the wind out of arguments that the administration was destroying the Gulf economy, though Sens. Vitter and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) have both raised concerns that new drilling rules will slow the pace of new drilling.

The third is a little more complicated. On the one hand, many Democrats seem reluctant to make the oil spill an election issue, because in doing so, they would have to acknowledge one embarrassing little detail: The Senate has failed to pass an oil spill response bill. On the other hand, many Republicans would have to reconcile their support for expanded offshore drilling with the obvious safety concerns. At the end of the day, it’s a thorny issue for both sides of the aisle.

After the midterms, once our elected officials trek back to D.C. to do the less glamorous job of legislating, the big question is this: How will Congress deal with offshore drilling? Right now, it’s unclear. The momentum to pass an oil spill response bill is gone, and with it go the prospects that we’ll see stand-alone legislation on the issue. While it could come up in the lame-duck session, it seems more likely that oil spill response provisions will make their way into a broader energy bill next year that will focus on low-hanging fruit issues like electric vehicles and efficiency, possibly paired with a renewable energy standard. Of course, the outcome of the midterm elections will likely determine the lame-duck agenda.

Just how stringent oil spill response provisions will be depends largely on the outcome of behind-the-scenes liability negotiations between, among others, Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who would prefer unlimited liability on any company responsible for a spill, and Sens. Landrieu and Mark Begich (D-Alaska), who are trying to devise a mechanism by which companies can pool their liability in the event of a large disaster.

________________________________

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/24/1888736/oil-spill-fades-from-political.html

Miami Herald

Column, Fred Grimm

So much for the oil spill’s impact

BY FRED GRIMM
FGRIMM@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Not only did that giant horrible plume of oil seem to disperse in the Gulf, it disappeared from politics.

Six months ago, the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico was seen as both the worst natural disaster in American history and the most vexing problem in American politics. “This is what I wake up to in the morning, and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about,” President Obama said.

The ruinous effect of 4.1 million barrels of red, gooey crude washing onto the Gulf Coast would surely affect the November elections.

Thanks to the spill, Gov. Charlie Crist, commanding a flotilla of plastic booms off the Florida Panhandle beaches, was able to resurrect his candidacy in the U.S. Senate race. In early summer, Crist was transformed into the environmental governor with lots of media attention and a lead in the polls.

But in the final weeks of the campaign, the spill — along with Crist’s allure — has receded from public consciousness.

The gusher was capped three months ago. Worried talk of an environmental catastrophe was soon drowned out by an angry harangue from oil-state politicians demanding an end to the moratorium on new deep-water wells. Elected officials formerly concerned for shrimpers, fishermen and the Gulf Coast tourist industry talked incessantly about the loss of drilling jobs.

On Oct. 12, the Obama administration lifted the moratorium. And the worst natural disaster in American history became no more relevant to American voters than those vaguely remembered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over in Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal has stubbornly persevered with his $360 million chain of earthen berms 40 miles offshore, despite protests from environmentalists and marine scientists.

So far, his sand barriers have intercepted only about 1,000 barrels of oil. That works out to $36,000 a barrel — not such a cost effective way to protect the coast. But Jindal’s berm project, also known as Jindal’s folly, was a political conception, a monument to himself when it was proposed in May, a time political leaders were still obsessed with the Gulf disaster.

Lately, not only has the oil spill faded from the public narrative, so have other environmental concerns — except as the stuff of derision from tea party insurgents.

The new right-wing activists, poised to chase Democrats out of their majority positions in Congress, regard talk of global warming as biblical heresy. As former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, reincarnated as a tea party intellectual, put it, “The Lord God Almighty made the heavens and the Earth to his satisfaction. It is quite pretentious of we little weaklings here on earth to think that we are going to destroy God’s creation.”

A New York Times/CBS poll this month found only 14 percent of the tea partiers called global warming an imminent problem. More than half doubted that global warming posed a future problem.

After Nov. 2, the new political establishment will ignore all those secular worries about melting polar caps, massive wildfires, dust storms, ocean dead zones and a rising sea that could inundate much of the Florida peninsula.

So much for worries about preventing future deep-water spills. So much for carbon-cutting measures that might slow global warming. If climate scientists are right about rising sea levels, and the tea partiers are wrong, so much for Florida.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/01-4

Published on Monday, November 1, 2010 by Inter Press Service
by Dahr Jamail

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana – Gulf coast fishers, conservationists, seafood distributors and oil workers rallied here at Louisiana’s capital over the weekend to demand that oil giant BP be held accountable for the “ongoing” use of toxic dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We don’t have the open sores and blisters caused by BP’s toxic dispersants that the people in Plaquemine’s Parish have,” Karen Hopkins from Grand Isle, Louisiana told IPS. “We are being poisoned by BP’s same dispersants, but our symptoms are more lethargy and depression symptoms caused by chemical poisoning.”

Hopkins, who works for Dean Blanchard Seafood, a large and well-known seafood distributor, was a member of the Oct. 30 Rally for Gulf Change, whose organizers said they were working towards “preserving our God-given rights to clean air and water for future generations.”

Drew Landry, who describes himself as “a songwriter who works for a commercial craw-fisherman”, told IPS that he first grew concerned about BP’s mishandling of the oil disaster, which began on Apr. 20 when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, by what he saw the oil giant do the following day.

“I played a concert in New Orleans on Apr. 20, and the next morning went to take one of the classes on how to clean oil,” Landry told IPS. “I realized it was not about cleaning oil, but rather BP’s effort to get a roster of names of commercial fishermen from whom they’d have to defend themselves against in the future.”

The organizers and speakers at the rally that was held on the steps of the state capitol building on a sunny Saturday were most concerned with BP’s massive use of toxic dispersants to sink the oil. The dispersants were also injected at the wellhead to keep most of the oil from reaching the surface.

BP used Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527, both of which are banned in Britain and at least 19 other countries. Chemicals released from the combination of crude oil and dispersants can cause health problems that include central nervous system depression, respiratory problems, neurotoxic effects, genetic mutations, leukemia, birth defects, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage, among many others.

“I’ve had lung problems, auto-immune problems, nausea, headaches, and bronchitis because of BP’s disaster,” Beverly Armand from Grand Isle told IPS. “When I leave the area it clears up, and when I go back, I get sick again.”

Armand said her doctor has placed her on three different antibiotics, none of which has been very effective, and had her blood tested for hydrocarbons.

“My creatine level is high, and they found creosote in my blood,” she explained. “And we still have fresh oil coming in, and BP is still spraying Corexit. The stuff they are calling algae is foam caused by the dispersants.”

Protesters held signs that read “Hell No It’s Not Over”, “Ban Corexit Now”, and a drawing of a pelican with the words “I want my life back” – the last also a reference to comments by the former chief executive of BP, Tony Hayward, which were widely deemed insensitive to struggling Gulf residents.

Organizers told IPS that several people were unable to attend the rally because the interstate 10 highway from Lafayette was closed due to a chemical spill.

Susan Price, a small business owner from Chauvin, Louisiana, told IPS that she has been suffering from health problems since she was exposed in August to chemicals she believes are from the oil disaster.

“I’m worried for my grandchildren,” Price said at the rally. “The seafood is woefully under-tested for toxins, while the government and BP are patting themselves on the back for a job well done. We will not be lulled, be silenced, or stand down. We will fight to protect our people and our land.”

James Miller, a commercial fisherman from Mississippi, told onlookers that he found oil and dispersants in the water while fishing recently.

“I’ve had diarrhea, vomiting, the sweats, and been hospitalized for three days,” said Miller, who worked 73 days for BP as an oil spill responder. “I’ve seen the dead turtles, dead birds, dead dolphins and dead fish, and I’ve taken people out on my boat to show them the oil. It’s still there, and I can tell you the seafood is not safe to eat.”

Later that afternoon, the group convened a meeting at the Manship Theater in downtown Baton Rouge.

Rob Coulan, a businessman from Harvey, Louisiana, spoke of neuro-toxic side effects of the dispersants that have been well documented since at least 1987. “BP knew what this stuff would do long before they ever used it in the Gulf,” he said.

“BP used a world record amount of dispersants in our Gulf,” Marylee Orr, the executive director of Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said. “And we are doing petroleum hydrocarbon tests on soils, waters, and seafood and finding extremely high levels.”

“We still have oil, and all the problems associated with it,” Orr added. “And all the fishermen in this room will tell you that they [BP] are still using Corexit. The dead and dying birds and wildlife are merely a reflection of what is happening to us.”

Cherri Foytlin, whose husband works in the Gulf oil industry, announced that every Louisiana state representative and senator had been invited to both events. While she said that two had responded to her invitation by agreeing to meet with them, no one showed up at either event.

“In five to 10 years from now, people all along the Gulf Coast are going to be dropping dead from cancer, and that includes children,” Foytlin said, before directing her next comments towards BP. “I’m not your experiment. This is my life. Our Gulf is not your experiment.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/10/25

Published on Monday, October 25, 2010 by Suzanne Goldenberg

BP and several other big European companies are funding the midterm election campaigns of Tea Party favourites who deny the existence of global warming or oppose Barack Obama’s energy agenda, the Guardian has learned.

US Senate climate change deniers and Tea Party favourites including Jim DeMint and James Inhofe are being funded by BP and other polluters. (Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)An analysis of campaign finance by Climate Action Network Europe (Cane) found nearly 80% of campaign donations from a number of major European firms were directed towards senators who blocked action on climate change. These included incumbents who have been embraced by the Tea Party such as Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, and the notorious climate change denier James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma.

The report, released tomorrow, used information on the Open Secrets.org database to track what it called a co-ordinated attempt by some of Europe’s biggest polluters to influence the US midterms. It said: “The European companies are funding almost exclusively Senate candidates who have been outspoken in their opposition to comprehensive climate policy in the US and candidates who actively deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is caused by people.”

Obama and Democrats have accused corporate interests and anonymous donors of trying to hijack the midterms by funnelling money to the Chamber of Commerce and to conservative Tea Party groups. The Chamber of Commerce reportedly has raised $75m (£47m) for pro-business, mainly Republican candidates.

“Oil companies and the other special interests are spending millions on a campaign to gut clean-air standards and clean-energy standards, jeopardising the health and prosperity of this state,” Obama told a rally in California on Friday night.

Much of the speculation has focused on Karl Rove, the mastermind of George Bush’s victories, who has raised $15m for Republican candidates since September through a new organisation, American Crossroads. An NBC report warned that Rove was spearheading an effort to inject some $250m in television advertising for Republican candidates in the final days before the 2 November elections.

But Rove, appearing today on CBS television’s Face the Nation, accused Democrats of deploying the same tactics in 2008. “The president of the US had no problem at all when the Democrats did this,” he said. “It was not a threat to democracy when it helped him get elected.”

The Cane report said the companies, including BP, BASF, Bayer and Solvay, which are some of Europe’s biggest emitters, had collectively donated $240,200 to senators who blocked action on global warming – more even than the $217,000 the oil billionaires and Tea Party bankrollers, David and Charles Koch, have donated to Senate campaigns.

The biggest single donor was the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, which gave $108,100 to senators. BP made $25,000 in campaign donations, of which $18,000 went to senators who opposed action on climate change. Recipients of the European campaign donations included some of the biggest climate deniers in the Senate, such as Inhofe of Oklahoma, who has called global warming a hoax.

The foreign corporate interest in America’s midterms is not restricted to Europe. A report by ThinkProgress, operated by the Centre for American Progress, tracked donations to the Chamber of Commerce from a number of Indian and Middle Eastern oil coal and electricity companies.

Foreign interest does not stop with the elections. The Guardian reported earlier this year that a Belgian-based chemical company, Solvay, was behind a front group that is suing to strip the Obama administration of its powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Special thanks to Commondreams.org

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/10/scientists_lower_gulfs_health.html

Published: Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 4:00 PM
The Associated Press

View full size(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)A dead jellyfish floats amidst oil in the Gulf of Mexico southwest of the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River on the coast of Louisiana, Thursday, May 6, 2010. Scientists have lowered the Gulf’s overall health grades following the oil spill.

ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. – Six months after the rig explosion that led to the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, damage to the Gulf of Mexico can be measured more in increments than extinctions, say scientists polled by The Associated Press.

In an informal survey, 35 researchers who study the Gulf lowered their rating of its ecological health by several points, compared to their assessment before the BP well gushed millions of gallons of oil. But the drop in grade wasn’t dramatic. On a scale of 0 to 100, the overall average grade for the oiled Gulf was 65 – down from 71 before the spill.

This reflects scientists’ views that the spilled 172 million gallons of oil further eroded what was already a beleaguered body of water – tainted for years by farm runoff from the Mississippi River, overfishing, and oil from smaller spills and natural seepage.

The spill wasn’t the near-death blow initially feared. Nor is it the glancing strike that some relieved experts and officials said it was in midsummer.

“It is like a concussion,” said Larry McKinney, who heads the Gulf of Mexico research center at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. “We got hit hard and we certainly are seeing some symptoms of it.”

Will the symptoms stick around or just become yesterday’s headaches? That’s the question that couldn’t be answered at a conference earlier this month of 150 scientists at a hotel on a Florida beach untainted by the spill. The St. Pete Beach gathering was organized by the White House science office to coordinate future research.

“There’s the sense that it’s not as bad as we had originally feared; it’s not that worst case scenario,” said Steve Lohrenz, a biological oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi. “There’s still a lot of wariness of what that long-term impact is going to be.”

Steve Murawski, the chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, compared scientists research to a TV crime drama: “It’s the end of the story that counts, not all the steps along the way.”

We’re only at the 30-minute break in an hour-long drama, Murawski said.

And there’s a plot twist. Research findings already released have led scientists and the government to shift their focus from the sea’s surface to deeper waters and the ocean bottom.

A month-long cruise by Georgia researchers on the ship Oceanus reported oil on the sea floor that they suspect is BP’s but haven’t proven yet. Government officials still question whether there is oil on the sea floor, but the Georgia scientists say the samples smelled like an auto repair shop. They took 78 cores of sediment and only five had live worms in them. Usually they would all have life, said University of Georgia scientist Samantha Joye. She called it a “graveyard for the macrofauna.”

Scientists who study the Gulf of Mexico say its ecological health has declined, though not dramatically, since the BP oil spill. In an informal survey for The Associated Press, 75 scientists offered baseline pre-spill grades on a scale of 0 to 100 in July, with 100 being pristine.

The AP repeated the survey for the same categories in October, six months after the April 20 BP rig explosion. This time 35 scientists responded.

“The fact that there isn’t living fauna is a signal that something happened to these sites and these sediments,” Joye said in a phone interview Friday. “The horrible thing is they’ve been inundated with this oily material… There’s dead animals on the bottom and it stinks to high heaven of oil.”
University of South Florida’s Ernst Peebles said the oil on the floor “is undermining the ecosystem from the bottom up.”

David Hollander, also at South Florida, found some of the first plumes of the oil beneath the surface, something that government officials first disputed but now concede is real. Keeping the oil off the surface minimized damage to wetlands, beaches and some wildlife, so in some ways, “we dodged the bullet,” he said.

There are several reasons a sizable amount of oil didn’t make it to the surface where it could do more visual harm. For one thing, BP used 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants to break up the oil. But scientists give more credit to the high pressure and high temperature of the gusher that spewed the oil in droplets so tiny, they didn’t float to the surface.

“We still don’t know the long-term effect,” Hollander said.

Scientists worry the oil deep below will get into plankton and the food web, maybe not killing species directly but causing genetic mutations, stress or weakening some species, with effects that will only be seen years later.

“I think populations are going to be affected for years to come,” said Diane Blake, a Tulane University biochemist. “This is going to cause selective (evolutionary) pressure that’s going to change the Gulf in ways we don’t even know yet.”

It was a long-term assault from the well. From April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 people, to July 15 when the well was initially plugged, oil bled at a prodigious rate that BP and government officials had a hard time understanding. Initially, officials said only 42,000 gallons a day was flowing, but government scientists eventually said it was as much as 2.6 million gallons a day.

One of the species mentioned most often during two days of scientific sessions in Florida doesn’t even live in the Gulf. It’s herring. After 1989’s much smaller Exxon Valdez spill, it took awhile for the effects on Alaska’s herring to be noticed, but the once prolific species crashed to extremely low levels. While other species in Prince William Sound recovered, the herring population has yet to bounce back. And Gulf researchers are wondering if that sort of thing will happen again.

If one species in the Gulf is likely to wind up like the herring, it’s probably the bluefin tuna. And answers about its fate may be sitting in a lab in Poland.

Thanks to a 30-year agreement that dates to Cold War politics, that distant lab is analyzing samples of Gulf water collected in the spill area for the U.S. government. The tests are to find out what the oil did to the larvae. The bluefin was already in trouble before the spill, its spawning stock down 90 percent in the last 30 years.

The spill, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, happened in the precise place at just the right time to threaten the bluefin larvae bobbing on the surface. The Gulf of Mexico is the only known spawning area for western Atlantic bluefin.

“Was it catastrophic for the bluefin? Probably not,” said NOAA’s John Lamkin, who expects data back from Poland near the end of the year. But he added: “Any larvae that came into contact with the oil doesn’t have a chance.”

Scientists participating in the AP survey were not optimistic about the bluefin. They ranked the health of the tuna before the spill at a fragile 55. That’s now down to about 45.

The Associated Press initial survey in July asked Gulf scientists to give the region and several categories baseline grades for ecosystem health before the spill. The scale was 0 to 100, with 0 being dead and 100 being pristine. Seventy-five responded and the overall grade averaged 71, a respectable C.
This month, the AP asked scientists to grade the Gulf’s health now; 35 scientists responded. The overall average dropped about 10 percent, to 65, a struggling D. Scientists were asked about detailed categories and calculated the most noticeable harm to bluefin tuna, oysters, sea turtles, crabs, the sea floor and marshes.

The region’s wetlands, an already weakened massive natural incubator for shrimp, crabs, oysters and fish, slipped from 65 pre-spill to 60 now.

But the oil has not pushed Louisiana’s fragile marshlands to the edge of collapse.

Robert Moreau, the director of Turtle Cove Environmental Research Station at Southeastern Louisiana University, said, “Obviously, the news so far has been pretty good.

“At first, you look at the TV, you see all this oil pouring out, you think the worst,” he said.

There is no comprehensive calculation for how much marshland was oiled, but estimates range from less than a square mile to just a handful of square miles. Regardless, in the big picture that’s hardly alarming: Louisiana loses roughly 25 square miles of marsh each year due to a host of environmental and manmade causes. The state is the site of one of the most ferocious rates of land loss in the world.
About 390 miles of Louisiana shoreline was oiled, according to federal surveys and BP.

About 167 miles around Lake Pontchartrain basin was oiled, an important area because it buffers New Orleans. But John Lopez, the science director for the Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, said most of the affected shore saw “light or moderate oiling.”

“The marshland folks I work with don’t see it as something that is a major catastrophe,” said Loyola University marsh biologist David White, who has studied the quiet stands of marsh for 30 years.
The oiling was minimal, but “the jury is still out,” White said, on the long-term ecological effects because the massive oil spill may be rewiring the invisible and hard-to-detect inner workings of nature.

“The longer-term unknown is the impact on the food chain,” he said.

Surprisingly, there are some wildlife winners from the oil spill. That’s because there was a commercial fishing ban for months in parts of the northern Gulf, offering respite to some overfished species. More than 90 percent of the Gulf’s federal waters are now open to fishing.

“Red snapper are unbelievable right now,” said Mike Carron, head of the Northern Gulf Institute in Mississippi. “Now you could put a rock on the end of string and they’ll bite it.”

That’s the good news for one fish. As for the future? USF’s Hollander shook his head as he left the science conference: “We’ll never have a full accounting of the biological impacts.”

(This report was written by Seth Borenstein and Cain Burdeau of The Associated Press. Burdeau reported from New Orleans.)

Special thanks to Richard Charter