Killing the Gulf

The annual summertime dead zone caused by low oxygen levels in water along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline this year is twice as big as last year's, stretching 7,722 square miles across Louisiana's coast well into Texan waters, scientists with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium announced Monday.

[...]

The size of this year's dead zone might actually be larger than mapped. LUMCON's R/V Pelican research ship found a large area of hypoxia, or low-oxygen water, along the coast west of Galveston Bay and offshore in that area, but was unable to finish mapping there before returning to map an area east of the Atchafalaya River.

"This is the largest such area off the upper Texas coast that we have found since we began this work in 1985," said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of LUMCON and chief scientist for the dead-zone cruise.

[...]

The low-oxygen area is linked to high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, the main ingredients of agricultural fertilizers, and other nutrients carried by the Mississippi River from the Midwest into the Gulf.

[...]

It's still unclear what effect, if any, the oil spill had on the size of this year's zone.

  NOLA

It's not likely it made it better.

Up to 4 million barrels, the great bulk of the spill, remains unaccounted for in government statistics. Some of it has, most probably, been cleaned up by nature. Other amounts may be gone from the water, but they could have taken on a second life as contaminants in the air, or in landfills around the gulf coast.

And some oil is still out there - probably mixed with chemical dispersants.

  Sydney Morning Herald

Probably.

On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief, Jane Lubchenco, said the oil was now much less visible on the surface and present only in microscopic, dilute droplets further down. She said that was a sign that the Gulf ecosystem was resilient and processing the hydrocarbons.

Is she lying or just stupid? Tanker loads of dispersant "processed" the "hydrocarbons".

Ed Overton, a professor at Louisiana State University, said he believed the microbial process, supercharged by summer heat, was helping.

''We have made a gigantic biological treatment pond in the Gulf,'' Professor Overton said. I would say that the acute damage - we've seen it, it's [already] been done. And that the environment is in the recovery stage.''

Let me guess…Ed is one of the many professors BP put on its payroll immediately after the "spill".

One study from a Tulane University researcher found what seemed to be a worrying snapshot of what this missing oil is doing. Professor Caz Taylor looked at baby blue crabs and saw something odd under their translucent shells: orange blobs. She speculates that the crabs may have moulted in the midst of oil or dispersant and trapped some of it literally inside themselves.

''The worrying thing is that we're seeing these droplets everywhere that we're sampling,'' from Galveston Bay in Texas to Pensacola in Florida, she said.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.