THE WAR ON MOTHER NATURE: The BP Oil Spill Disaster - Petroleum Products From The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Linked To Deaths Of Newborn Dolphins!

Researchers investigated the deaths of perinatal dolphins, like this one, found in regions affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.© Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

April 12, 2016 - GULF OF MEXICO - Scientists have finalized a four-year study of newborn and fetal dolphins found stranded on beaches in the northern Gulf of Mexico between 2010 and 2013. Their study, reported in the journal Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, identified substantial differences between fetal and newborn dolphins found stranded inside and outside the areas affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The study team evaluated 69 perinatal common bottlenose dolphins in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, the areas most affected by the spill, and 26 others found in areas unaffected by the spill. The work was conducted as part of an effort to investigate an "unusual mortality event" in the Gulf primarily involving bottlenose dolphins, beginning in early 2010 and continuing into 2014.

Scientists saw higher numbers of stranded perinatal dolphins in the spill zone in 2011 than in other years, particularly in Mississippi and Alabama, the researchers report. The young dolphins, which died in the womb or shortly after birth, "were significantly smaller than those that stranded during previous years and in other geographic locations," they wrote.

Bottlenose dolphin gestation takes about 380 days, so perinatal dolphins that died in the early months of 2011 could have been exposed in the womb to petroleum products released the previous year, said University of Illinois veterinary diagnostic laboratory professor Kathleen Colegrove, who led the study. Colegrove works in the Chicago-based Zoological Pathology Program at the U. of I.

"Dolphin dams losing fetuses in 2011 would have been in the earlier stages of pregnancy in 2010 during the oil spill," she said.

The researchers report that 88 percent of the perinatal dolphins found in the spill zone had lung abnormalities, including partially or completely collapsed lungs. That and their small size suggest that they died in the womb or very soon after birth—before their lungs had a chance to fully inflate. Only 15 percent of those found in areas unaffected by the spill had this lung abnormality, the researchers said.

The team also found that the spill-zone dolphins were "particularly susceptible to late-term pregnancy failures, signs of fetal distress and development of in utero infections including brucellosis," a bacterial infection that can affect the brain, lungs, bones and reproductive function. Extensive testing found no evidence that an unusual or highly pathogenic Brucella strain was involved.

"These findings support that pregnant dolphins experienced significant health abnormalities that contributed to increased fetal deaths or deaths of dolphin neonates shortly after birth," Colegrove said.

A previous study by many of the same researchers revealed that nonperinatal bottlenose dolphins stranded in the spill zone after the spill were much more likely than other stranded dolphins to have severe lung and adrenal gland damage "consistent with petroleum product exposure."

"These diseases in pregnant dolphins likely led to reproductive losses," Colegrove said.

"Our new findings add to the mounting evidence from peer-reviewed studies that exposure to petroleum compounds following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill negatively impacted the reproductive health of dolphin populations living in the oil spill footprint in the northern Gulf of Mexico," said Dr. Teri Rowles, a veterinarian with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program and a co-author on the study.

More information: KM Colegrove et al. Fetal distress and in utero pneumonia in perinatal dolphins during the Northern Gulf of Mexico unusual mortality event, Diseases of Aquatic Organisms (2016). DOI: 10.3354/dao02969


- PHYS.

 

EUROPEAN VAMPIRISM AND THE WAR ON MOTHER NATURE: The BP Oil Spill - OVER A MILLION Birds Died During Deepwater Horizon Disaster!

May 08, 2014 - FLORIDA, UNITED STATES - The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon well blowout vomited more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and onto its shores--the largest accidental, offshore oil spill in history. It killed wildlife, tainted fisheries, and damaged coastal ecosystems from marshes in Louisiana to beaches in Florida. But due to a paucity of data, the true extent of the damage is still not yet known, especially where bird mortality is concerned. What research does exist is confidential property of the U.S. government, and will not see the light of day until the lawsuit against BP has run its course, the next phase of which begins in 2015.

A Brown Pelican.  Rebecca Field

Into this vacuum step J. Christopher Haney, Harold Geiger, and Jeffrey Short, three researchers with extensive experience in environmental monitoring and post-spill mortality assessments. In their recent study, which has been accepted for publication in Marine Ecology Progress Series, the authors estimate that up to 800,000 coastal birds died as a direct result of the Deepwater Horizon spill. That number, as large as it is, is on the conservative side, says Audubon Director of Bird Conservation for the Gulf Coast and Mississippi Flyway, Melanie Driscoll. Once further studies are conducted, says Driscoll, the number will certainly exceed one million. In comparison, a quarter of a million birds are estimated to have died as a direct result of the Exxon Valdez, a spill that was much smaller than that of Deepwater Horizon.

The study itself uses two models to estimate coastal bird mortality. The carcass sampling model attempts to answer a seemingly simple question: for every bird corpse found during clean-up efforts, how many bird bodies were missed, due to factors such as scavenging, or the bird dying at sea, or decomposition? The other model, called the exposure probability model, attempts to quantify how many birds of each species would have encountered the oil, given the size of the slick at any given time and estimated population densities. Despite these being two very different ways to estimate bird mortality, the models agreed very closely with the possible range of bird deaths: between 600,000 and 800,000 over the 95 days of the "acute phase" of the spill. Another way to think about that: 8,000 coastal birds died every day during the acute phase.

While the numbers are sobering on their own, drilling down to individual bird species reveal population-level impacts on their numbers. According to the paper, 36 percent of the entire Laughing Gull population in the northern Gulf of Mexico died within that 95-day period. Fifteen percent of Royal Terns perished, as did 12 percent of Brown Pelicans. On Queen Bess Island, Driscoll saw an entire colony of Royal Tern chicks oiled; they all subsequently died due to oil exposure.

The suffering that Driscoll observed during the actual spill foreshadowed this devastating loss of bird life, and she says she has feared that the toll could exceed a million birds. In the paper by Haney et al., says Driscoll, the researchers went to great lengths to explain how they used data from this and other spills to make their calculations. The authors described sources for overcounting and undercounting. For example, if oiled birds tend to fly toward shore, the researchers may have overestimated the number of birds that died. But sources of undercounting are far more prevalent: During the spill, searchers only collected whole carcasses, and they did not search breeding colonies until months after the initial spill. Further, the counts missed the carcasses that were either burned or skimmed away when rescue workers removed oil from the water's surface. The researchers also chose to not count live oiled birds and they deliberately excluded entire classes of birds--marsh-dwellers such as gallinules, rails, bitterns, and some herons and egrets. More than 2,000 miles of marsh were affected by the spill, representing a large number of bird deaths which are not accounted for in the analysis.

The mortality from acute oil exposure is only a fraction of the damage that Deepwater Horizon wreaked upon the Gulf. Four years after the disaster, some 200 miles of Louisiana beach is still contaminated with oil. Studies on shrimp and dolphins have shown long-term health issues with animals exposed to oil and dispersant during the Deepwater Horizon--lowered reproductive success, chronic health problems, and starvation due to loss of food sources.

The most distressing aspect of this entire situation, says Driscoll, is that, four years later, BP is putting more energy into stonewalling than restoring the Gulf. The third phase of the lawsuit against BP for its violation of the Clean Water Act will not begin until 2015--five years after the disaster. This means that most compensatory funds to help restore the Gulf have not yet materialized. Meanwhile, BP attempts to discredit studies that show harm to Gulf resources and has started refusing to fund research to understand delayed and chronic effects on birds and other wildlife, says Driscoll. While birds and other wildlife in the Gulf struggle to recover, the government and conservation communities use early restoration money to repair damage and steward the birds, doing what they can to make sure the animals get the best chance at long-term survival. - Audubon Magazine.

BP OIL SPILL DISASTER: Mutated And Deformed Gulf Coast Fish Species - Health Defects Found In Fish Exposed To Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Three Years Later!

May 04, 2013 - GULF OF MEXICO - Crude oil toxicity continued to sicken a sentinel Gulf Coast fish species for at least more than a year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to new findings from a research team that includes a University of California, Davis, scientist. With researchers from Louisiana and South Carolina, the scientists found that Gulf killifish embryos exposed to sediments from oiled locations in 2010 and 2011 show developmental abnormalities, including heart defects, delayed hatching and reduced hatching success. The killifish is an environmental indicator species, or a "canary in the coal mine," used to predict broader exposures and health risks.

Gulf killifish embryos exposed to sediments from oiled locations show developmental abnormalities, including heart defects, delayed hatching and reduced hatching success.© Benjamin Dubansky

The findings, posted online in advance of publication in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, are part of an ongoing collaborative effort to track the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Gulf killifish populations in areas of Louisiana that received heavy amounts of oil.

Other species that share similar habitats with the Gulf killifish, such as redfish, speckled trout, flounder, blue crabs, shrimp and oysters -- may be at risk of similar effects.

"These effects are characteristic of crude oil toxicity," said co-author Andrew Whitehead, an assistant professor of environmental toxicology at UC Davis. "It's important that we observe it in the context of the Deepwater Horizon spill because it tells us it is far too early to say the effects of the oil spill are known and inconsequential. By definition, effects on reproduction and development -- effects that could impact populations -- can take time to emerge."

Killifish are abundant in the coastal marsh habitats along the Gulf Coast. Though not fished commercially, they are an important forage fish and a key member of the ecological community. Because they are nonmigratory, measurements of their health are indicative of their local environment, making them an ideal subject for study.

The researchers collected Gulf killifish from an oiled site at Isle Grande Terre, La., and monitored them for measures of exposure to crude oil. They also exposed killifish embryos in the lab to sediment collected from oiled sites at Isle Grande Terre within Barataria Bay in Louisiana.

"Our findings indicate that the developmental success of these fish in the field may be compromised," said lead author Benjamin Dubansky, who recently earned his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University.

Whitehead said the report's findings may predict longer-term impacts to killifish populations. However, oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill showed up in patches, rather than coating the coastline. That means some killifish could have been hit hard by the spill while others were less impacted.

Whitehead said it is possible that some of the healthier, less impacted killifish could buffer the effects of the spill for the population as a whole.

The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative and the National Institutes of Health.

The other researchers in the study are Fernando Galvez, associate professor of biological sciences at Louisiana State University; and Charles D. Rice, professor of biological sciences at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. The researchers have tracked the impact of the oil on killifish since the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred in April 2010. - Science Daily.

BP OIL SPILL DISASTER: Mutated and Deformed Sea Life - Shrimp Without Eyes, Crabs Without Claws,...?!

Al Jazeera just published a thoroughly disturbing report on the deformed fish and shellfish that are being pulled from the Gulf in the wake of the BP oil spill. Shrimp without eyes or even eye sockets, snapper with large pink growths, undersized and misshapen crabs--the fishermen in the Gulf that Al Jazeera talked to have never seen anything like it.

Deformed Gulf Shrimps On the left is a Gulf shrimp with growths, while on the
right are a group of shrimps without either eyes or eye sockets

An excerpt from the report:

Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs "with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they've been dead for a week".  Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills. 

"We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills." It's not incredibly surprising to see deformities in the wake of the oil spill--we knew (and know) very little about dispersants in general and about Corexit, the dispersant used by BP, in particular. A nonprofit environmental law firm called Earthjustice actually had to sue to obtain the precise formula of the material, and even then, that group claims that there is nowhere near enough data to know what effects the dispersant will have on the Gulf.

According to Earthjustice's review, at least 13 of the 57 chemicals in Corexit are suspected or known to be toxic to aquatic life. Phosphorus, for example, may have helped microbes readily break down the oil, but phosphorus also happens to be toxic to fish. What's not clear is what's actually causing these deformities--is it the oil, the dispersant, or both?  We do know, disturbingly, that the oil entered the food chain. That may be part of the problem here--shrimp and crabs are bottom-feeders, and snapper, according to Wikipedia, also commonly feast on crustaceans like sea lice and crabs (though not shrimp). Check out Al Jazeera for more. - POPSCI.

WATCH: Al Jazeera discusses the BP oil spill, the mutations and the repercussions for the Gulf.

DWARF STAR: Killer Stars from deep black space threaten Earth?!

 
"The convergence of the gravitationalfield of passing stars can affect the objects in the solar system. First of all, the Oort cloud will be affected. There is also afairly low probability that the star will pass so close to the Sun,that it will have an impact on the Kuiper belt."

It seems that everyday the memes keep coming about the imminent convergence of our solar system with a planetary object/star such as a brown dwarf star. A failed sun, dim and cold, that could cause widespread cataclysmic chaos on planet Earth.

Outer space poses a threat to the Solar System. This time it was declared not by homegrown advocates of the near doomsday, but solid astrophysicists. Earlier this year the 217th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society was held in Seattle where the most dangerous objects for our planet were named. With the help of The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers have compiled a list of stars that may represent a potential threat to Earth, for example, by approaching the Sun and impacting objects around it. It turned out that of the 40,000 red dwarfs (objects of this class are most common in the universe) nearest to us, 18 are quite capable of "attacking" the solar system.

One of the most dangerous objects is the Oort cloud, a giant bubble containing billions of ice and rock boulders. Researchers believe that these objects are constantly circulating through the solar system as comets, leaving deep craters when coming into contact with planets. They fell on Earth as well. Although the Oort cloud is located at a distance of 50,000 to 100,000 astronomical units from the Sun, under the influence of stellar gravity, planets in our solar system, including Earth, may undergo an active comet bombardment. At least, John Bochanski from the University of Pennsylvania believes this to be a possibility. Recently, astrophysicists John Mathis and Daniel Whitmire) from the University of Louisiana came to the conclusion that within the Oort cloud there must be an object whose mass is two times heavier than that of Jupiter's - perhaps a gas giant or a cold star. The distance to it is approximately 30,000 astronomical units. An object dubbed Tyche, the goddess of fortune, is a sister of the sinister Nemesis star. Incidentally, according to some predictions, next year the mysterious "star Nemesis" (also called Nibiru and Planet X) will destroy the Earth. Scientists are concerned with asteroids that have been recently frequenting Earth. Only in the past two years, a few pieces of these heavenly bodies, albeit quite small in size, fell on Earth. With the help of a telescope WISE astrophysicists hope to identify nearly 100,000 asteroids representing a potential threat. Even more serious threat comes from the Kuiper belt. This is the name of the giant ring beyond the orbit of Pluto which consists of rocks and asteroids, located at a much closer distance to the Sun than the Oort cloud - from 30 to 50 astronomical units.

There are other dangers as well. For example, star Gliese 710 of the constellation of the Serpent. This object, whose weight is approximately 0.6 of the solar mass, is approaching the Sun at a rate of several dozens of kilometers per second and is now located at a distance of 63 light years from us. This was stated by an employee of the Pulkovo Observatory RAS, head of the kinematics and galactic structure of positional astronomy, Vadim Bobylev. He used the data on the motion of 35,000 stars closest to us, received by a European research probe Hipparcos. He reconstructed the orbits of these stars, and calculated that the probability of convergence of Gliese 710 with our system is 86 percent. Theoretically it may even get into the orbit of Pluto. However, this would happen no earlier than in 1.45 million years. The possibility that Gliese 710 would slam into the Sun is almost zero, says Bobylev. "But at the time the convergence of the gravitational field of passing stars can affect the objects in the solar system," he said. "First of all, the Oort cloud will be affected. There is also a fairly low probability that the star will pass so close to the Sun, that it will have an impact on the Kuiper belt." According to the history of astronomical observations, during the lifetime of the solar system the "outside" stellar objects have repeatedly approached it. Over the past two million years, our system was approached by nine stars. Most likely, in tens of millions of years the number of such encounters has been much greater. No one knows whether they caused the destruction of life on some planets. After all, there is a hypothesis that global cataclysms that resulted in the extinction of all things live have repeatedly happened on Earth. - Pravda.