Thursday
May172012
"We've Never Seen Anything Like This" Mutations and Deformities in Gulf Seafood Post BP Spill
May 17, 2012 The words "We've never seen anything like it" are repeated by scientists, seafood processors and fishermen throughout the gulf region. A feature article from Al Jazeera English, Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists, examines the alarming abnormalities turning up in fish, shrimp, crab and other species since the BP oil spill.
We are really witnessing only the beginning of the fallout from this disaster. While sea creatures with mutated genomes may not actively contain oil or toxic chemicals, how will these mutations impact their survival? Fishers interviewed in that article are reporting massive decreases in the catches. I don't see how BP can ever make this right. How do you compensate a country for wiping out one of their richest sources of food?
BP's Deepwater Horizon spill and the subsequent, unprecedented dump of toxic chemical dispersants has damaged fisheries and affected the genomes of gulf seafood.
Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.The Al Jazeera piece is a must read. I can't do it justice here with just a few paragraphs but here are some quotes from various fishers and scientists interviewed for the article. The eerily constant refrain of "we've never seen anything like this" runs through the piece.
Tracy Kuhn and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Louisiana:
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