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: The War On Mother Nature - The 2010 BP Oil Spill Left Oily Ring On The Seafloor The Size Of Rhode Island; About 10 Million Gallons Of Oil Over 1,200 Square Miles!

"The biggest problem on the planet is not some devilish supernatural entity locked in an eternal struggle for human souls, or for that matter shape-shifting reptilian aliens manipulating mankind through secret societies. No, these evilous figures are really allegories or aspects of the European's inherently vampiric nature and irreverence for Mother Earth, the indigenous peoples and the animals." - Andre Heath, Publisher.

October 29, 2014 - GULF OF MEXICO - The 2010 BP oil spill that resulted in 172 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico has, four years later, left an oily “bathtub ring” about the size of Rhode Island on the sea floor surrounding the site of the Macondo well, according to new research.

About 10 million gallons of oil has collected on the sea floor near the former site of the Deepwater Horizon rig and BP-operated Macondo well, where the oil spewed from April 20 to July 15 in 2010, according to a study by David Valentine, a University of California Santa Barbara geochemist, and co-author Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Cumulative BP / Deepwater Horizon oil slick footprint (orange).

The study, published Monday in ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,’ found that the oil spill has left several splotches in the Macondo well area, some with more oil residue than the 1,200-square-mile “bathtub ring.”

Valentine said though there are no chemical signature tests given the oil has since degraded, the source of the oil is obvious.

"There's this sort of ring where you see around the Macondo well where the concentrations are elevated," Valentine said, according to AP.

He added that oil levels found inside the ring were as much as 10,000 times higher than outside the ring. A chemical ingredient of oil was found on the sea floor, from two-thirds of a mile to a mile below the water’s surface.

BP questioned the study’s findings, especially since the oil can no longer be tested given its degraded state.

A drilling platform near the Transocean Discoverer Enterprise drillship burns off gas collected at the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill
on June 25, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images / AFP)

The BP oil spill spewed 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf in 2010.

In an email to AP, spokesman Jason Ryan said, "the authors failed to identify the source of the oil, leading them to grossly overstate the amount of residual Macondo oil on the sea floor and the geographic area in which it is found."

Though such chemical analysis is impossible at this point, study authors Valentine and Reddy said other evidence point to the Deepwater Horizon disaster: the depth of the oil, the area it encompasses, and the distance from the Macondo well.

The study was praised by marine scientists Ed Overton, of Louisiana State University, and Ian MacDonald, of Florida State University, neither of whom were involved in its conclusions, according to AP.

Though the spill is more than four years old, scientists are still measuring - and debating - the total ecological impact of the BP spill. For now, Reddy said they believed their findings validated earlier research that found deep water coral was coated with oil and damaged from the spill.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 people and polluted Gulf waters that wash onto the shores of five US states as oil gushed from the drilling rig for nearly three months before the flow was brought to a halt.
In all, prosecutors said over 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, making it the largest accident of its kind in petroleum industry history. Around 16,000 miles of coastline were affected and, according to the National Park Service, over 8,000 animals died as a result.

In early September, a federal judge ruled that BP had acted with gross negligence before the spill, indicating that the corporation may have to pay billions of dollars in fines.

US District Court Judge Carl Barbier also wrote in his ruling that two other oil companies — Transocean and Halliburton — acted negligent as well, but failed to find them as responsible as BP with regards to the spill. Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon rig, but drilling rights were leased to BP; Halliburton was in charge of the “cementing” process on the doomed drilling site.

The three companies, Barbier wrote, are "each liable under general maritime law for the blowout, explosion and oil spill," but the bulk of the blame — specifically 67 percent — will rest on BP. According to Bloomberg News, BP may next face fines as high as $18 billion — the maximum penalty under the Clean Water Act — and has already put aside $3.5 billion to cover those costs.

Despite the ruling, energy companies can count on political allies in states like Louisiana to defend their interests. For instance, in June, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law legislation that rescued dozens of oil and gas companies from a lawsuit over long-term damage done to the state’s wetlands.

Waves carry in blobs of oil as it washes ashore from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on June 26, 2010 in Orange Beach, Alabama.
(Joe Raedle / Getty Images / AFP)

The rig blew on April 20, 2010 and spewed 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf through the summer. Scientists are still trying to figure
where all the oil went and what effects it had.

The study by David Valentine, the chief scientist on the federal damage assessment research ships, estimates that about 10 million gallons of oil coagulated on
the floor of the Gulf of Mexico around the damaged Deepwater Horizons oil rig. Valentine said the spill left other splotches containing even more oil.

New research shows that the BP oil spill left an oily "bathub ring" on the sea floor that's about the size of Rhode Island.

Experts said the law may very well thwart future claims against energy companies, including those against BP.
In a letter urging Jindal to veto the legislation, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell wrote that the bill included “very broad and all-encompassing language” and “may have other potential serious unintended consequences."

“No one can currently quantify or identify all of the causes of action which will be swept away if this bill becomes law,” the letter warned

“In the coming years perhaps the proponents of the bill can tailor legislation more narrowly drawn which does not portend such a broad and vague attack on the abilities of the State, and most importantly, local governmental entities to protect their citizens.” - RT.

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.

THE WAR ON THE EARTH: Huge Slick At Site Of BP Oil Disaster In The Gulf Of Mexico - Visible Rainbow Sheen And Weathered Oil Not Seen For Months!

January 29, 2013 - GULF OF MEXICO - Today we had a wonderful treat. Our hard-working colleague and Gulf heroine Trisha James and her husband Mark joined us for a flight over the Gulf! On our way southward, we took a little extra time to check out some spots of concern along the Mississippi River, thanks to an alert from Scott Eustis of the Gulf Restoration Network. So in addition to what we can show you about offshore Louisiana today, you'll see some photos of two large coal terminals along the east bank of the Mississippi, as well as a new pass that the river is building in Bohemia, downriver of where the levee ends. You'll also see a dramatic wetlands fire that surprised us on our return back.

Unfortunately there are still some troubling sites offshore.  The chronic Taylor Energy slick remains a heinous pollution situation, and today's quiet seas revealed that slick to be larger in size than it has looked to us before.  What looks to be a natural seep about 10 miles southwest of the Macondo area, which we discovered last week, remains as it looked last week. 

But the most troubling vision today was the Macondo area itself.  The slick that we had first noticed last fall, which was spreading over the area within a half-mile or so of the scene of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, was huge today. It stretched over 7 nautical miles in the south-north direction and was almost a mile wide in some spots. There were some patches of rainbow sheen and even some weathered oil (brownish "mousse"), although overall it remained a light surface sheen.  The ENSCO8502 drilling rig is still working in MC253 there; its presence provides scale in the photos. See all the photos HERE.

The two large coal piles we examined are the Kinder Morgan International Marine Terminal and United Bulk Coal Terminal.  We are told that there are plans to expand these coal (and pet coke) terminals by nearly 400%, into Plaquemines Parish. Such coal terminals have been stopped in other parts of the country such as the northwest, for environmental protection reasons. Is this a case of Louisiana being willing to sacrifice and take risks that other more cautious states have refused? - OWOC.

WATCH: OWOC Flyover of Gulf of Mexico.

DISASTER IMPACT: BP Oil Spill - Dispersant Makes Oil From Spills 52 Times More Toxic!

November 30, 2012 - GULF OF MEXICO - For microscopic animals living in the Gulf of Mexico, even worse than the toxic oil released during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster may be the very oil dispersants used to clean it up, a new study finds. More than 2 million gallons (7.5 million liters) of oil dispersants called Corexit 9527A and 9500A were dumped into the gulf in an effort to prevent oil from reaching shore and to help it degrade more quickly. However, when oil and Corexit are combined, the mixture becomes up to 52 times more toxic than oil alone, according to a study published online this week in the journal Environmental Pollution. "There is a synergistic interaction between crude oil and the dispersant that makes it more toxic," said Terry Snell, a study co-author and biologist at Georgia Tech. Using dispersants breaks up the oil into small droplets and makes it less visible, but, "on the other hand, makes it more toxic to the planktonic food chain," Snell told LiveScience.

This photograph shows windrows of emulsified oil (bright orange) sprayed with dispersant.
The photo was taken on April 26, 2010 as part of an aerial observation overflight.

Toxic mixture
That mixture of dispersant and oil in the gulf would've wreaked havoc on rotifers, which form the base of the marine food web, and their eggs in seafloor sediments, Snell said. In the study, Snell and colleagues tested ratios of oil and dispersant found in the gulf in 2010, using actual oil from the well that leaked in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the dispersant. The mixture was similarly toxic at the various ratios tested, the study found. His group exposed several varieties of rotifers to concentrations of the oil-dispersant mixture likely seen over a large area of the gulf. "The levels in the gulf were toxic, and seriously toxic," Snell said. "That probably put a big dent in the planktonic food web for some extended period of time, but nobody really made the measurements to figure out the impact." The dispersant makes the oil more deadly by decreasing the size of the droplets, making it more "bio-available" to small organisms, said Ian MacDonald, a researcher at Florida State University. "The effect is specifically a toxic synergy — the sum is worse than the parts," said MacDonald, who was not involved in the research. 

A cautionary tale
This is one of the first studies to look at the impact of the oil-dispersant mixture on plankton. A decline in populations of plankton could impact larger animals all the way up to whales, he said. In general, plankton can rebound quickly, although the toxicity to larvae in sediments is concerning, since it reduces the size of the next generation. This ocean-bottom oil slurry could also have impacted other species that spend part of their life cycles here like algae and crustaceans. "This is an important study that adds badly needed data to help us better understand the effects of oil spills and oil spill remediation strategies, such as the use of dispersants," said Stephen Klaine, an environmental toxicologist at Clemson University who wasn't involved in the research. "Species' differences in the sensitivity to any toxic compounds, including the ones in this discussion, can be huge." The results contrast with those released by the Environmental Protection Agency in August 2010. That study found that a mixture of oil and Corexit isn't more toxic than oil alone to both a species of shrimp and species of fish. However, several studies have found the mixture is more toxic than oil to the embryos of several fish species. The EPA could not immediately be reached for comment. "To date, EPA has done nothing but congratulate itself on how Corexit was used and avow they would do it the same way again," MacDonald said. However, Snell said the dispersant should not be used. It would be better to let the oil disperse on its own to minimize ecological damage, he said. "This is a cautionary tale that we need to do the science before the emergency happens so we can make decisions that are fully informed," Snell said. "In this case, the Corexit is simply there to make the oil disperse and go out of sight. But out of sight doesn't mean it's safe in regard to the food web. It's hard to sit by and not do something," Snell said. "But in this case, doing something actually made it more toxic." - MSNBC.

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.

EARTH, THE CEMETERY PLANET: Researchers Discover Gulf Dead Zone Much Larger Than Previously Thought - Lack of Oxygen Can Kill Marine Life Within Hours; "The Hypoxia Level Was Crazy!"

For years now, scientists have been monitoring the development of a massive dead zone off the coast of south Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, new research is showing the presence of another underwater area lacking oxygen and life -- this time in the Chandeleur Sound, east of St. Bernard Parish. Gulf waters include some of the richest areas for seafood in the country, and part of that critical habitat includes the Chandeleur Sound. "This general area is a major path for migration of fish," said Dr. John Lopez of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.

Deep below the surface, life may be struggling. The Foundation, along with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCOM), recently decided to share their findings with each other concerning the dead zone in the Chandeleur Sound. What they discovered was that the dead zone is four times larger than they initially thought. It covers more than a 1,000 square miles, stretching from the Chandeleur Islands, east to the Florida Panhandle and possibly beyond.

"It's relatively new that it's been discovered," Lopez said. "Basically, in 2008, we saw the first indications of it. We think it may have been developing for a number of years. It had just been overlooked." That's no longer the case, though. Helping to track the dead zone is the non-profit Marine Research and Assistance Council. "We have different stratifications where we drop the instrument to different water levels, and we measure temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen," said Chuck Cropp, president of the Marine Research and Assistance Council.

Cropp said it didn't take long before their instruments picked up on the dead zone, also known as hypoxia. "The hypoxia level was crazy," he said. "So, we went from having water with oxygen in it, to having water with no oxygen in it." A lack of oxygen can kill marine life within hours. Shellfish that can't easily swim away are most at risk. What effect the dead zone could have on the fisheries, and what may be causing it in the first place, is still not clear. However, scientists suspect it may have something to do with its location and the sea current there.

"Essentially, you have the boot of Louisiana that comes further south out into the Gulf of Mexico and creates a corner with the Mississippi coastline," Lopez said. "We think this may just be an area of low energy." Researchers don't think the dead zone has anything to do with the oil spill, since they first spotted it two years beforehand. They plan to head out again in a couple weeks to gather more samples from the dead zone. They also plan to reach out to their counterparts in Alabama and Florida because they suspect the dead zone may stretch even further east than they have been able to document so far. - WWLTV.