Two Years After the BP Spill, Gulf Oysters Are Full Of Heavy Metals

-By Alyssa Battistoni
| Fri Apr. 20, 2012 1:40 PM PDT

On the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, evidence of the spill’s ongoing impacts on Gulf people and ecosystems continues to mount. As if eyeless shrimp, toxic beaches, and dead dolphins weren’t bad enough, a new study suggests that Gulf oysters are also in trouble.

A team of scientists led by Dr. Peter Roopnarine of the California Academy of Sciences says that oysters in the Gulf contain higher concentrations of the heavy metals found in crude oil now than they did before the spill. Using a method known-awesomely-as “laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry,” the scientists vaporized oyster shells and superheated them, causing different elements to radiate light at specific, known frequencies so they could be identified. They measured higher concentrations of vanadium, cobalt, and chromium-three heavy metals present in oil-in the oysters sampled after the spill. Even more worrisome, the team found that 89 percent of post-spill specimens displayed the signs of metaplasia, a condition in which tissues are transformed in response to stress. Oysters suffering from the condition often have trouble reproducing, which could have worrisome implications for oyster populations and the species further up the food chain that depend on them.

Scientists don’t yet know how trace metals like those found in the oysters move through food chains, or what effects they could have on high-level consumers, including people. This study is just the start of a broader effort to understand the impacts of heavy metals on Gulf ecosystems: the team is planning to conduct a similar analysis of mussels, and hopes to model the potential impacts of the spill on the Gulf food web. For now, though, the study provides more evidence that the oil spill’s effects are still being felt, and are likely to continue long into the future. The findings are particularly troubling in light of past studies indicating that the combination of heavy metal pollution and warmer temperatures is especially deadly for oysters-a fact that doesn’t bode well in an age of warming seas.

It’s yet another piece of bad news for Louisiana’s oystermen, who are still struggling to recover from the double whammy of Katrina and the BP spill, and faced with consumers afraid to eat the oysters they do manage to harvest. For many, particularly in the African-American, Cajun, and Croatian communities, oyster fishing is a tradition stretching back generations; for them, the long-term effects of the spill threaten to put an end to a way of life with a proud heritage. It’s also bad news for the state’s economy, which reaped around $300 million from oyster sales in good years before the spill. And of course, it’s bad news for lovers of the region’s iconic sandwich, the oyster po’boy.

One bright spot amidst the often-bleak Gulf Coast news comes in the form of the RESTORE Act, which has been slowly winding its way through Congress over the past year. If enacted, it would deliver much-needed funds-80 percent of BP’s Clean Water Act fines-to coastal communities and coastal restoration projects; fingers crossed that the bad news about ongoing ecosystem and social impacts will have a silver lining in the form of greater impetus for the act’s passage.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/19/deepwater-horizon-aftermath-dolphin-worth?intcmp=122

Two years after the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, BP and US authorities wrangle over how much should be paid in damages

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
Follow @suzyji
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 April 2012 09.59 EDT

A dead dolphin marked with spray paint on Queen Bess Island at the mouth of Barataria Bay in 2010. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

The dolphins are preserved in giant freezers in marine labs across America. Tagged, catalogued, carefully guarded – and suspended in liquid nitrogen for the moment when they will determine BP’s final bill for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, which started two years ago this Friday.

The dolphins, among more than 700 that have washed up on Gulf shores since the last two years, are a crucial component of the investigation now underway to decide the cost to BP of restoring the wildlife and environment damaged by the biggest offshore spill in US history.

The carcasses were collected – on at least one occasion by armed federal officials, and generally with witnesses from BP – from marine science facilities on the Gulf coast and transported to labs across the country. Scientists are evaluating their tissue for evidence of exposure to hydrocarbons from the runaway well, as part of the lengthy process of accounting for environmental damage to the Gulf.

At its most basic, the process now consuming teams of BP and government scientists and lawyers revolves around this: How much is a dolphin worth, and how exactly did it die?
How much lasting harm was done by the oil that still occasionally washes up on beaches, or remains as splotches on the ocean floor near the site of BP’s broken well? What can be done to turn the clock back, and restore the wildlife and environment to levels that would have existed if there had not been a spill?

Wednesday’s proposed $7.8bn settlement between BP and more than 100,000 people suing for economic damages due takes the oil company a step closer to consigning the spill to the past. BP is moving towards a settlement with the federal government and the governments of Louisiana and Mississippi. It could also face criminal charges.

But arguably the most difficult negotiation still lies ahead as BP and the federal government try to establish how much damage was done to the environment as a direct result of the oil spill, and how much the company will have to pay to set things right.
“It is extraordinarily difficult to monetise environmental harm. What dollar value do we place on a destroyed marsh or the loss of a spawning ground? What is the price associated with killing birds and marine mammals? Even if we were capable of meaningfully establishing a price for ecological harm, there is so much that we do not know about the harm to the Gulf of Mexico – and will not know for years – that it may never be possible to come up with an accurate natural resource damage assessment,” said David Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former head of the justice department’s environmental crimes section.

“The best the government can do is negotiate for a sum that is large enough – in the billions of dollars – to cover all possible restoration costs.”

Those familiar with the process say compiling the Natural Resources Damage Assessment, setting the price tag and strategy for restoring the Gulf environment, will continue at least throughout 2013.

“Everything about this case is more challenging due to the scale and due to the uncertainty about the long-term effects,” said Tom Brosnan of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, which is leading the federal government’s damage assessment effort.

So far there are more than 100 NRDA investigations, or work plans, trying to assess the ecological damage done when more than 4 million barrels of oil entered the Gulf of Mexico.

The first step is to establish cause, Brosnan said. “The onus is on us to prove that if an animal is sick or dies that the oil actually caused it.”. Then BP and the government must agree on the value of what was lost – an exercise that is routinely conducted with sea birds killed by oil spills but never before for dolphins.

“That’s one of the most vexing aspects,” said a lawyer familiar with the process, calculating the value of a creature beyond its direct role in the human economy. He acknowledged a charismatic mega fauna, like the dolphin, is probably worth more than a humbler animal, but he declined to offer a dollar figure.

Nobody is seriously suggesting that BP pay a dollar amount for each dolphin lost, Brosnan said. But the numbers are important in determining how to restore dolphin populations to levels they would have reached had there never been a spill in the first place. “You need to analyse what you have to do to get the dolphins back,” said Brosnan.

The immediate task, however, is establishing what was lost. “You start to put together a story, that given these factors what do we think the adverse impacts on dolphins could be. Is it inhalation of the oil fumes? Is it eating contaminated goop? Is it skin exposure? Is it that their prey gets taken out?”

Aside from the dolphins, government scientists, closely shadowed by experts working for BP, are studying the effects on creatures as tiny as zooplankton and as massive as manatees. They also hope to draw on the findings of more than 150 other studies into the effects of the spill.

The scientists are starting at a tremendous disadvantage, however. Conservationists worry that a dearth of data about the Gulf before the spill will work in BP’s favour when it comes time to figuring out the bill.

Arriving at a mutually agreed figure for damages may come down to the dolphins. “They do make a sentinel species,” said George Crozier, recently retired as the director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. “They are not only at the top of the food chain, but they eat all of the fish that they eat. That means they have greater potential to be exposed.”

As large marine mammals, they also broke through the surface of water coated with a thick scum of oil and they inhaled the fumes from the giant fires used to burn off the oil.
But figuring out how many dolphins died or how they did so is bound to be a subject of contention between BP and the federal government. It’s hard to even agree on a number.

Scientists do not know how many distinct dolphin populations there were in the Gulf before the spill. They generally agree that the 700 dolphins that have stranded in the last two years represent only a fraction of the animals that have died in the same period of time. But what fraction? Wildlife biologists often work on the premise that for every carcass that washes ashore, there are more than 10 dolphins whose bodies are never recovered.
However, a study published last month of earlier dolphin strandings in the Gulf of Mexico said the true figure for dolphin deaths due to the oil spill could be 50 or even 250 times higher. So 700 dolphin carcasses, now stored at freezers awaiting analysis, could represent a true death toll of up to 175,000 of the animals.

Then there is the matter of conclusively linking the deaths to BP oil. The current dolphin die-off – the longest yet – began a few months before the oil spill, and scientists have speculated that some deaths may have been caused by a dolphin version of measles, or by a one-time flush of cold water down the Mississippi after a freak snowstorm.

Noaa released preliminary findings last month that appeared to strengthen evidence of a link between dolphin deaths and BP oil in an area off coastal Louisiana.

They drew urine and blood samples and conducted ultrasounds on 32 live dolphins from Barataria Bay, an area that was heavily oiled in the spill, and concluded the animals were underweight, anaemic and had low blood sugar.

Campaigners say the findings plus two other studies underway of coastal dolphin populations are critical to establishing the long-term effects of the oil spill.

“It’s circumstantial but it’s as circumstantial as finding a room full of dead people and a guy holding a canon,” said Michael Jasny, who works in the marine mammal programme of the Natural Resources Defence Council. “The circumstantial evidence is very, very strong.”

However, the preliminary studies failed to convince BP – especially when there are billions involved. A BP official said there were “multiple potential causes” for the dolphin deaths.
“Recent reports about the health of dolphins in Barataria Bay appear to be based on NRDA data that has not been fully analysed and is still undergoing important quality assurance and validation procedures,” the official said.

For the moment, however, the company and the federal government are working co-operatively on the damage assessment. BP paid $14bn to clean up oiled marshes and beaches. It pledged $1bn for immediate use on restoration projections, and $500m for environmental research.

The co-operation makes it likely BP and the federal government can avoid a law suit. It could also help unlock money for full-scale restoration projects sooner. Officials on both sides were hopeful the damage assessment could be complete some time in 2013.

The joint effort is troubling for some campaigners, who fear that BP and the federal government are working to wrap things up before the full impact of the spill is truly understood. “So much of what is going on is really black box. It’s just negotiations between scientists and lawyers,” said Aaron Viles of the Gulf Restoration Network.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

For Immediate Release: Friday, April 20, 2012
Contact: Clean Ocean Action, 732-872-0111

Public Hearing set for Friday, April 27th, 2012 at 1pm at Atlantic City Convention Center

Sandy Hook, NJ – On Friday, April 27th, in Atlantic City, the United States Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM), is holding the last in a series of East Coast hearings on their recent proposal to blast airgun arrays from Florida to the Delaware Bay searching for offshore oil to drill. The hearing will be held at 1pm in room 301 of the Atlantic City Convention Center.

These “seismic surveys” involve towing airgun arrays behind survey ships, regularly and repeatedly blasting sound waves through the ocean and deep into the ocean floor to pinpoint locations of sub-seabed oil and gas deposits. While the industry term “airgun” suggests an innocuous impact, these surveys generate intense marine noise pollution that propagates over vast areas of the ocean potentially causing significant damage to marine life and marine ecosystems. In addition to the exploratory tactic’s danger to marine life, it is the first step toward oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean – which threatens our clean ocean economy and community.

Sandy Hook-based ocean advocacy organization Clean Ocean Action (COA) is calling on New Jersey’s citizens to attend the public hearing (which is the only one scheduled for New Jersey), on April 27th at 1pm, in room 301 of the Atlantic City Convention Center to voice their opposition to these proposed seismic surveys. COA is a coalition of environmental, fishing, civic, and community based organizations that come together to combat ocean pollution and ocean industrialization. The groups have been working with a national coalition to keep the Atlantic Ocean oil-drilling-free.

“For the first time in over 25 years, the Atlantic Ocean is under the gun,” said Cindy Zipf, Clean Ocean Action’s Executive Director. “We must not sacrifice the region’s vibrant, clean ocean economy as the mainstay of the Atlantic seaboard-it’s killing the goose that lays the golden egg. The Administration is searching for oil in all the wrong places under the pretense of reducing gasoline prices”

Federal studies show if oil was found, it would take decades for oil production to come online, and even then would reduce gas prices by only $0.03 per gallon. However, there is no requirement that oil and gas found in the U.S. must stay here, and could be exported overseas.

“Noise pollution caused by exploration and development would negatively impact fisheries and marine life,” said Sean Dixon, Clean Ocean Action’s Coastal Policy Attorney. “The BP Oil Disaster shows how devastating blow-outs and spills can be to tourism and fishing industries.”

“The sonic airgun testing for oil and gas reserves is a proven destroyer of marine life, causing serious ecosystem problems to all marine life within hundreds of miles of the testing. Marine mammals are especially prone to damage due to their sensitive sonar and face serious permanent harm and outright death from this testing. The endangered right whale’s migratory route runs the whole of the US east coast causing outright fishing bans at times and vessel speed restrictions, yet BOEM wants to blow out their eardrums. Nothing good can come from this testing or the oil and gas drilling that will surely follow,” added Jim Lovgren of Fishermen’s Dock Co-op in Point Pleasant. Fishing catch rates in some cases have been shown to decrease by 40-80% over thousands of square kilometers around a single airgun array.

“The draft Environment Impact Analyses fails to address a number of biological concerns affecting marine fishes as well as potential conflicts with scheduled sportfishing tournaments involving hundreds of recreational vessels,” stated Bruce Freeman, marine fisheries biologist. “In addition, potential conflicts with divers and associated safety concerns have not been recognized.”

“I am totally against offshore seismic exploration because of the dangers it poses sea creatures. The blasts will disorient fish, and have been linked to marine mammal strandings,” said Jeff Hoffberger, from the Surfrider Foundation, and a certified volunteer with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine. Proposed seismic surveys could interfere with the endangered and vulnerable North Atlantic Right Whale’s migration route through the Mid-Atlantic and calving off the Southeast coast.

Clean Ocean Action is urging people to attend and sign up and testify on April 27th at 1pm, in room 301 of the Atlantic City Convention Center.

To request to speak at the public hearing, you can email Mr. Gary Goeke, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, at GGEIS@boem.gov or call at (504) 736-3233. For more information or to plan on attending, call 732-872-0111 or visit www.cleanoceanaction.org.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.miamiherald.com/oilspill/

INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS
* Gulf coast habitats
* Methods to contain leaks
* How slick might spread
* Oil political money
* Understanding effects

Experts: Another BP-style Gulf blowout all too possible
Much more needs to be done to lower the risks of another offshore oil disaster like the BP blowout two years ago in the Gulf of Mexico, the presidential commission that investigated the disaster reported Tuesday in its first progress update. – 5:10 AM ET

Senate approves plan to send BP fines to Gulf restoration
The Senate approved a highway bill Wednesday that includes a long-sought provision for the Gulf Coast: A guarantee that 80 percent of the fines collected from the April 2010 BP oil spill – an amount that could reach $20 billion – would be distributed for coastal restoration to the five states along the Gulf of Mexico: Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Alabama.

Restore Act measure to boost BP cleanup could receive vote today
The House is expected to vote later today on an amendment pushed by Gulf State lawmakers to dedicate 80 percent of the fines collected from the BP oil spill to a trust fund for coastal restoration of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

Restore Act measure to boost BP cleanup passes House
The House approved an amendment Thursday pushed by Gulf State lawmakers to dedicate 80 percent of the fines collected from the BP oil spill to a trust fund for coastal restoration of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

Cuba shows U.S. its response plans in case of oil spill
As Cuba prepares to embark on a new round of exploratory offshore drilling, U.S. officials are slightly more enlightened about the island nation’s plans in the event of a catastrophic oil spill on the scale of last year’s Deepwater Horizon explosion.
NOAA: BP oil spill may have contributed high mortality rate of dolphins
NOAA officials called a national media briefing Thursday and said that the BP oil spill could have played a role in the high number of dolphin deaths in the northern Gulf since 2010.

Oil spill fund chief says he welcomes oversight
The administrator of a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill said he welcomes an independent audit of how much money has been paid out and what calculations were made to arrive at those payouts.
Following complaints from Gulf, Congress seeks audit of BP oil spill fund
Republican Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Marco Rubio of Florida, unhappy with the handling of the $20 billion fund set up by BP to compensate victims of the 2010 Gulf oil spill, won Senate approval Friday for an independent audit of the organization.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/oilspill/#storylink=cpy

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Published on Thursday, April 19, 2012
by Robert C. Koehler

The AP story on military maneuvers in the Arctic reads like the gleeful report of a mugging.

“To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea lanes and a slew of potential conflicts.”

Wow, what fun – a new playground, with maybe 90 billion barrels waiting for corporate exploitation beneath the melting ice cap, 30 percent of the world’s untapped natural gas, and all sorts of minerals, diamonds, gold, copper, zinc and so much more. And the world’s armed forces get to play war games. Boys will be boys!

The first insanity here is that this is how major news is reported, as the sophomoric reduction of a terrifying global wound to a spectacle of pop culture, with military leaders portrayed as independent actors, taking it on themselves to prepare for inevitable war in or over the Arctic Circle, which is, thanks to global warming, now open for business.

There’s not the least pause in the breathless verbiage to reflect on the possible implications of climate change. There’s no attempt to widen the perspective of the story beyond the military-industrial competitive frenzy to exploit suddenly available resources. There’s no feint toward the future – just more of the same, nationalism and capitalism, flowing mindlessly to the Arctic like chemicals in a Petri dish. The message here seems to be: This is the final phase of human evolution, folks, so let’s make the most of it.

We haven’t developed a popular media yet that’s interested in or capable of reaching toward the bigger story in its global reportage. It’s stuck in the futility of zero-sum geopolitics. But it strikes me that now may be the time to expand our horizons.

For instance, a report issued two years ago by the Arctic Governance Project, notes: “Climate change is a reality rather than a future prospect in the Arctic. Serious impacts are occurring already; more are expected. These impacts take such diverse forms as the thinning and receding of sea ice; melting of glaciers, ice sheets and permafrost; altering of snow conditions; intensifying storm surges and coastal erosion; and declining populations of migratory animals.

The Associated Press is still writing about our perfect adolescent selfishness, but as the global systems in which we live change in utterly unpredictable ways, we have no choice but to expand our thinking to embrace the unfathomable . . . and this is what love is, though the word itself is inadequate to describe the opening in our psyches that must occur, and is occurring.

“Some adaptive measures will take place entirely within the confines of national jurisdictions and be handled through domestic programs,” the report continues, then makes this small and obvious, yet stunning, observation: “But political and legal boundaries do not shape the impacts of climate change.”

What’s happening to our planet – to the womb and sustainer of all life, including our own – is bigger than the organizational structure we have thus far managed to achieve, and the first, if not the worst, mistake we can commit in response to the environmental crisis now unmistakably manifesting around us in so many ways is to stay trapped within our self-created boundaries. Enough small thought! “Political and legal boundaries do not shape the impacts of climate change.”

We have to begin thinking and organizing ourselves beyond the arbitrary constraints of nations and beyond our current, resource-devouring economic system. We have to imagine a global culture that doesn’t pit humanity against nature or itself, that transcends the diminished goal of individual or national dominance and sees success only as something measurable if there’s a loser.

You might say it’s time to grow up.

“So far, we humans have been children in relationship to earth,” writes Charles Eisenstein in his remarkable book Sacred Economics. He traces our growth process over the millennia, culminating in modern times:

“We had our adolescent growth spurt with industry, and on the mental plane entered through Cartesian science the extreme of separation, the fully developed ego and hyperrationality of the young teenager who, like humanity in the Age of Science, completes the stage of cognitive development known as ‘formal operations,’ consisting of the manipulation of abstractions. But as the extreme of yang contains the birth of yin, so does the extreme of separation contain the seed of what comes next: reunion.

“In adolescence,” Eisenstein writes, “we fall in love, and our world of perfect reason and perfect selfishness falls apart as the self expands to include the beloved within its bounds.”

The Associated Press is still writing about our perfect adolescent selfishness, but as the global systems in which we live change in utterly unpredictable ways, we have no choice but to expand our thinking to embrace the unfathomable . . . and this is what love is, though the word itself is inadequate to describe the opening in our psyches that must occur, and is occurring.

We must fall in love with the Earth – the living, sacred planet, this “dynamic system,” in the words of the Bolivian legislation acknowledging its rights, “made up of the undivided community of all living beings, who are all interconnected, interdependent and complementary, sharing a common destiny.”

This is the future – the only future we have.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

Special thanks to Richard Charter and Common Dreams