Coral Die-Off Took Scientist by Surprise!

[sce56]

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/coral-cataclysm-took-scientist-by-surprise/?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fscience%2Fearth%2Findex.jsonp
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF



Associated Press Dying coral with attached brittle starfish photographed this week near the capped gulf oil well.

Early on in the BP oil spill, I interviewed some marine biologists who had spent nearly a decade charting a series of deepwater coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Concern ran high that drifting plumes of dissolved oil particles and of chemical dispersant, which was being applied directly to the gushing well to break up oil before it reached the surface, would harm coral communities in near the spill site.

A few preliminary surveys in the aftermath of the spill found no clear evidence of harm, leading to some early optimism that the deepwater coral had perhaps dodged an ecological bullet.

But this week, scientists piloted a submersible robot to the seafloor seven miles southwest of the well and found dozens of recently dead and dying coral communities. The site was in the direct vicinity of where large plumes of dispersed oil were discovered drifting through the deep ocean last spring in the early weeks after the spill.

Charles Fisher, a marine biologist from Penn State who is the chief scientist on the gulf expedition, told me he had expected to see some subtle effects from the oil. Instead, he found an ecosystem in collapse.

“I have seen many individual dead coral colonies over the years, but I’ve never seen a site full of dead and dying coral colonies,” he said.

Roughly 90 percent of corals at one site he surveyed were dead or dying and covered in a brown substance that he suspects was not oil but “gooey, rotting coral tissue.”

Further testing is necessary to determine exactly what killed the coral, but Dr. Fisher said the circumstantial evidence linking the die-off to the oil spill was overwhelming and represented “a smoking gun.”

“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,” Dr. Fisher wrote in a statement released Friday afternoon by Penn State.

Whether more damaged coral exists near BP’s now-capped well remains to be seen. According to Dr. Fisher, he and a fellow scientist have identified a series of 25 sites within 15 miles of the wellhead that may host undiscovered coral communities. The site of the coral die-off discovered this week was the first of the 25 sites surveyed.

Another research cruise is planned for December to examine more of these target sites.



May have taken Scientist by surprise but not us common ocean loving folk, We knew BP killed the Gulf!

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I agree. The scientists may be the surprised...but not too many of the "ordinary folks" are.

That pic looks like something out of a horror movie...

Sad commentary that they were surprised by this...Does the oil industry pay them ALL???

Guess they were surprised by this as well....

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/toxic-chemicals-deep-at-bp-oil-spill-site-in-gulf-of-mexico-raise-warning-flags/19701145

Toxic Chemicals Deep at BP Spill Site Raise Warning Flags


(Nov. 4) -- On the surface at least, the Gulf of Mexico appears relatively clean more than six months after the massive BP oil spill, but scientists say they've found toxic materials deep in the ocean at the site of the blowout, and some warn that all the environmental impacts of the gusher won't be known for some time.

In the latest study published this week, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39974702/ns/us_news-environment/ researchers report that large quantities of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, were present in the deep sea near the Macondo well head in May, and that the potentially dangerous compounds had likely spread to other areas since those findings.

"Based on our findings, subsurface exposure to PAH resulting from the Deepwater Horizon oil release was likely to be associated with acute toxicity effects in discrete depth layers between 1,000 and 1,400 meters in the region southwest of the wellhead site and extending at least as far as 13 kilometers," researchers from Texas A&M, the University of Southern Mississippi and other institutions wrote in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

<snip>

[xchrom]

2. economists, scientists, experts of all stripes in america are always

running around mouths agape in 'surprise'.:wow:

hmmmph -- we used to be more competent than this.

[PDJane]

3. It took him by surprise? Pardon?

What the hell did he think would happen when they tossed tonnes and tonnes of chemicals into the damn ocean? There would be no repercussions?

[mbperrin]

4. Petroleum is poison. Don't know why this factoid is lost on some.

I grew up with it, worked in the field for a dozen years, still live in the middle of one of the world's largest oil fields.

It is a poison. It will kill you, injure you, cripple you, ruin your organs by contact, and so why would anyone think covering an entire area with oil would be okay?

Drive to Reagan County, Texas, for the discovery well just west of there and look at the surrounding thousands of acres which were drilled before BOP's were invented. This area looks like the craters of the moon. Nothing grows, it is dead. And this is from early spills in the 1920s and 30s.

[n2doc]

5. It took him by surprise because they surveyed back in july and found no problems

All you armchair scientists should calm down and realize that not everyone goes in with a preconceived notion of doom. Scientists are guided by what happened previously, and the reports I had seen, from folks studying this first hand, indicated that there were no visible problems back in the middle of the event in July in these coral reefs. Now there are. It will now take time and effort to figure out the exact cause and mechanism of this.

[hedgehog]

6. I've criticized people in other threads for posting what I believed were

wildly exaggerated claims regarding the Corexit. This story here is the reason. After hearing all the dubious scare stories, would the average person be able to appreciate the significance of this documented report?

I would also like to point out, that the scientists will only go so far as to say that the coral is damaged and dying or dead. They will not commit themselves as to whether it was the Corexit, the oil itself, the oil dispersed by Corexit , oxygen depletion or some combination that is the proximate cause. Clearly, the oil spill is the ultimate cause. Until we eliminate oil spills by stopping the drilling of oil, we need studies to determine the best response to an oil spill.

Focusing on Corexit in this case is like focusing on whale harpoons for decimating the species. Whale harpoons were the method, but the cause was the demand for whale oil. Even if we never spill another drop of oil, we will still destroy coral world wide as we heat up the atmosphere burning oil!

[glinda]

7. I think it is time to out the scientists resumes online. If they are that stupid they

are most likely working for petroleum.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. Nature holds everyone accountable.

Get use to it.

[Goldstein1984]

9. No thinking person would be surprised by damage from oil

unless their though processes are muddled by oil company money.