It’s Official: Huge Area of the Gulf Has Been Turned Into A Massive Dead Zone By The BP Gulf Oil Spill

  Posted by - July 12, 2010 at 2:37 am - Permalink - Source via Alexander Higgins Blog
BP Gulf Oil Spill Deadzone
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I recently wrote an article about the millions of dead fish float ashore during a massive exodus of deep sea life to the coast to avoid the BP Gulf Oil Spill.

In that article scientists speculated that the fish were migrating to shallow waters to avoid oxygen depleted waters otherwise know as “dead zones” where no life can live.

I then called out the press for labeling the exodus of sea life as “strange” and “unusual”.

It seems that Government, and at points the media, is just as happy to mindlessly echo the massive campaign of disinformation being dished out by BP as if it were absolute fact.

That would signify that it is time to change gears and go after the press for continuing to disservice the public by publishing BP’s lip service.

The press needs to be held to standard of journalistic integrity that scolds them for publishing information released by BP without vetting that information first.

In my last post, Sea Life Flocks To Coast To Avoid The BP Gulf Oil Spill As Millions of Dead Fish Float Ashore, I did just that.

In that post the Associated Press labeled the mass exodus of deep sea life swarming to clean shallow coastal waters in order to avoid the oil, methane and toxic dispersants as both strange and unusual.

I find nothing strange or unusual about helpless sea life fleeing toxic waters in order to survive.

Now we have the the latest round of lies coming from BP.

They are denying the existence of plumes of methane that scientists are now finding all over the Gulf of Mexico in concentrations up to 10,000 times higher than normal.

The headlines currently in the press about these methane plumes are smack full of the same story line that was floating around in the media when scientists first reported that they discovered the underwater plumes of oil which where unsurprisingly denied by both BP and the Federal Government.

You can see some shocking photos of the sea life that couldn’t escape the BP Gulf oil spill here.

Discovery News is now reporting that scientists have confirmed a massive dead zone, covering over 1,600 square miles, has been created off the coast of Alabama and they are pointing their fingers at the BP Gulf Oil Spill as the culprit.

Dead Zone in Gulf Linked to Oil

Oxygen-starved waters that have persisted for more than a month in the Gulf of Mexico are likely due to the BP oil spill, researchers say.

THE GIST

  • A zone of low oxygen has persisted for more than a month off the coast of Alabama.
  • Wildlife that can move has left. Plankton in the low-oxygen zones has died.
  • The long-term effects are uncertain. [In deep waters it could last for decades]

An unusual low oxygen zone in Gulf of Mexico waters off the Alabama shore has persisted for more than a month, and evidence points to the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill as the cause.

Oil spills can deplete oxygen in water by providing a source of food to microbes that grow on oil and consume oxygen in the process.

Researchers can’t say how low oxygen levels will affect the region’s ecosystem in the long term, but for now, most animals that can swim away have left the area. Plankton in the zone have died.

The researchers measured low oxygen levels along the entire 40-mile stretch they sampled around Dauphin Island, Ala., from about 40 miles offshore to within a mile or two of the shoreline. The bottom layer of water was oxygen-depleted at depths of about 30 feet close to shore to 100 feet further out, along the continental shelf — a rim of shallow water tracing the coast from Mississippi to Florida.

“It’s not little local pockets,” said Monty Graham of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, who is tracking the zone. “It’s over a regional scale. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were a band of low oxygen over that entire area between the Mississippi River and Apalachicola, Florida.”

“The low oxygen was pushing up very close to the shore,” he added.

…

Now the researchers have more evidence suggesting the rivers are an unlikely culprit. The low oxygen levels have persisted past the time of the seasonal freshwater surge into the Gulf; the zone is larger than would be expected from river-borne nutrients; and the low-oxygen waters seem to be arriving via a tongue of cold water that has pushed up from offshore carrying elevated levels of methane, Graham said.

The team is still waiting for test results measuring oil levels in the oxygen-depleted waters, which would help pinpoint oil as the cause.

Long-term effects are uncertain. “I don’t think anybody can predict anything with confidence about what the ecosystem will do,” Graham said.

The good news is that the shallow waters turn over relatively quickly, so once the spill is stopped, oxygen levels should rise. In deeper waters, where researchers have measured decreased oxygen levels, it might be a different story.

“The effects off the shelf might be longer,” Graham said. “If you drive the oxygen down at 1200 meters (3600 feet), there is nothing to replace that oxygen rapidly. You might see a low oxygen signature for years, maybe even decades.”

Based on the description in the article I marked off the confirmed dead zone on the map below in red.

The area in purple is where Monty Graham, a scientist from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab who is tracking the dead zone, says the current dead zone could possibly extend.

The lighter blue area is the intercontinental shelf where Graham says the bottom layer of water was oxygen-depleted in the areas that have been tested.

BP Gulf Oil Spill Dead Zone Map

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