CSM: Ecological risk grows as Deepwater Horizon oil rig sinks in Gulf

[PeterMP]

Bad news.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GULF_OIL_SPILL_CORALS?SITE=INEVA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

For the first time, federal scientists have found damage to deep sea coral and other marine life on the ocean floor several miles from the blown-out BP well - a strong indication that damage from the spill could be significantly greater than officials had previously acknowledged.

Tests are needed to verify that the coral died from oil that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, but the chief scientist who led the government-funded expedition said Friday he was convinced it was related.

"What we have at this point is the smoking gun," said Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who led the expedition aboard the Ronald Brown, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel.

"There is an abundance of circumstantial data that suggests that what happened is related to the recent oil spill," Fisher said.

[twa]

That is bad news, but good relatively speaking.

[DeaconBlue]

Are you saying that the damage from this spill was so bad that it took moore than 3 months after the spill was brought under control to find damage that can be conclusively drawn to it?

[Corcaigh]

Are you saying that the damage from this spill was so bad that it took moore than 3 months after the spill was brought under control to find damage that can be conclusively drawn to it?

The damage is 4,600 feet below the surface. It's not as if you'd spot it from a passing ship.

[PeterMP]

That is bad news, but good relatively speaking.

Relative to what?

[twa]

Relative to what?

To the doomsday predictions that were so popular(even in this thread)....a matter of lowered expectations:)

[PeterMP]

To the doomsday predictions that were so popular(even in this thread)....a matter of lowered expectations:)

You mean comments like this (my response to a posts of yours about a panel from the government saying the use of dispersants was okay):

I'm not at all sure the know more than us. They seem to have just ignored the most relevant points from the vulnerability of sensitive deep sea ecosystems (e.g. the deep sea corals), the current issues in the gulf with hypoxia, the possibility of combinatorial effects (and here I think that there is a good possibility of combinatorial effects is obvious), and the previous recoveries of beaches and other bodies of land (e.g. from the Persian Gulf studies, except for the salt marshes, land where oil came ashore recovered pretty quickly).

They'll be more studies to see how wide this is spread, but for now, this is exactly what I expected through out this thread.

There was substantial amounts of oil deep underwater for relatively long periods of time (this reef was ~7 miles from the well so the length of time ti takes oil to travel underwater at 4,600 feet)

That oil (with the dispersants) will have negatively affected deep sea ocean life in a manner that we realistically have little hope of repairing or helping (as compared to say, oiled birds or beaches). The end result will be a shift in the deep sea ecology over a relatively large area of the Gulf from a mostly aerobic one (which it was around the point of the spill before the spill) to an anerobic one. This will then have an effect up and across the water table.

[PeterMP]

Are you saying that the damage from this spill was so bad that it took moore than 3 months after the spill was brought under control to find damage that can be conclusively drawn to it?

Yeah, I'm surprised it took the government months to see if something that several independent scientists were saying would be a problem DURING the spill actually was a problem.

If you don't look for the problem where experts are telling you there is going to be a problem for months, you don't find the problem for months.

Funny thing how that works.

[twa]

What do ya think?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253233/sea-life-flourishes-gulf-lou-dolinar

Sea Life Flourishes in the Gulf

The Great Oil Spill Panic of 2010 will go down in history as mass hysteria on par with the Dutch tulip bubble.

[PeterMP]

What do ya think?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253233/sea-life-flourishes-gulf-lou-dolinar

Sea Life Flourishes in the Gulf

The Great Oil Spill Panic of 2010 will go down in history as mass hysteria on par with the Dutch tulip bubble.

The fishing thing isn't surprising at all and anybody that paid attention would have thought it was really surprising.

There were no reports of massive fish die offs in the press or elsewhere because there weren't any. But it is important to keep in mind that they are talking about commercially viable fish, which don't include in deep sea scavangers that don't live at high numbers anyway.

In terms of the deep sea corals, distance and direction important.

The other coral the 16 referred to in the piece, were along the FL coast, a long way from the spill site and are in shallower water. If we were seeing damage that far away in shallow water, there would be major issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/science/earth/06coral.html

"Coral sites in shallower waters farther from the well have not suffered visible damage, scientists say, but they are still studying these reefs for signs of less acute long-term effects.

“There’s a lot of work to be done to see if there’s been some sublethal effect on these corals,” said Erik Cordes, a marine biologist from Temple University who has been studying reefs in the gulf in the aftermath of the spill. "

(This is from the NYT piece I posted. They are talking about the same sites.)

One group is looking at sites around the gulf oil spill at deep corals near the leak. They've looked at two sites. One shows very significant damage to it (7 miles). The other, 10 miles away, but also in the another direction, show minimal problems.

There is also a group looking for long term affects at shallow reefs along the Fl coast. These aren't even deep sea reefs so you'd only expect them to see lighter (the real heavy stuff never comes off the floor) molecules that either will go to the surface and evaporate or things that can be pretty easily metabolized in an aerobic environment (shallow means more oxygen). If we were seeing major affects in shallow water that far away, that would be REALLY REALLY bad news. Even the group studying them isn't really expecting or looking for short term affects, but longer term affects related to reproduction. Your link when it talks about 16 sites is including them.

Again, we'll get more surveys along the bottom around the spill site to see how bad the situation is, but if you have even a 5 mile radius with little to aerobic metabolism happening at 4,200 feet in the Gulf that is going to be a long term issue that is going to have larger affects as anerobic metabolism won't keep up with the in coming organic material and a local anoxic environment will build that will then have broader implications.

[PeterMP]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-submarine-dive-finds-oil-dead-sea-life/story?id=12305709

"In an exclusive trip aboard the U.S. Navy's deep-ocean research submersible Alvin, ABC News was given the chance to observe the impact of this summer's massive oil spill that most will never see.

The ocean floor appears to be littered with twigs, but Joye points out that they are actually dead worms and that Alvin is sitting on top of what is considered an 80-square mile kill zone. "

"The devastation, she said, could last "years or decades."

"It's still there and it's going to degrade very slowly," she said. "

"But 5,000 feet down, the oil appears to be everywhere. The government estimates that less than 25 percent of the oil remains, but these scientists say it's not gone, just settled at the bottom of the ocean. "

5,000 feet under the ocean with minimal oxygen dense crude that couldn't/didn't go to the surface, plus all of the things that were living there that are now dead, the things that wander into the "kill" zone that will die, plus all of the ordinary organic material that would normally sink to the bottom and be degraded.

You're looking at the nucleus of a large metabolically mostly anaerobic environment. She's wrong when she says years or decades. The oxygen levels in the area will never catch up with amount of organic material that needs to be degraded. Assuming we don't do anything, it will be permanent and grow.

[twa]

You're looking at the nucleus of a large metabolically mostly anaerobic environment. She's wrong when she says years or decades. The oxygen levels in the area will never catch up with amount of organic material that needs to be degraded. Assuming we don't do anything, it will be permanent and grow.

You don't believe the unique organisms down there will feast on both the oil and dead?

What are you proposing we do?

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6001/204.abstract

Deep-Sea Oil Plume Enriches Indigenous Oil-Degrading Bacteria

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2zNLQ2eDI84J:en.wikinews.org/wiki/Oil-eating_microbe_found_in_the_Gulf_of_Mexico+deep+sea+oil+eating+organisms&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Sample analysis was eased because the researchers used the pocket-sized Berkeley Lab DNA sampler PhyloChip. It allowed researchers to detect the presence of thousands of species of bacteria in samples from a wide range of environmental sources, without the culturing procedures usually performed in a furnished lab workplace. With the device, Hazen and his co-researchers discovered that a dominant microbe, making up 90 percent of all the bacteria in the oil plume, is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales family, more specifically Oleispirea antarctica and Oceaniserpentilla haliotis.

The previous works were measuring low levels of oxygen in certain areas to detect microbes activity. Researchers thought that increased activity would lead to more aerobic activities, such as breathing, which depletes the oxygen content in water. However, the newly discovered species doesn't seem to be consuming much oxygen from the water column. The study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67-percent, while within the plume, it was 59-percent. By Terry Hazen's words, "The low concentrations of iron in seawater may have prevented oxygen concentrations dropping more precipitously from biodegradation demand on the petroleum, since many hydrocarbon-degrading enzymes have iron as a component... There's not enough iron to form more of these enzymes, which would degrade the carbon faster but also consume more oxygen."

Analysis of changes in the oil composition as the plume extended from the wellhead pointed to faster than expected biodegradation rates with the half-life of alkanes ranging from 1.2 to 6.1 days. This microbe thrives in cold water, with temperatures in the deep recorded at 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit).

[China]

Oil is being measured in parts per billion — meaning the water is safe enough to drink

I found this amusing. If you want to drink seawater, that's fine, but seawater is not potable.

[twa]

Now why would I wanna put it in a pot?

Ya wouldn't want to put fish in your tap water either

[PeterMP]

You don't believe the unique organisms down there will feast on both the oil and dead?

What are you proposing we do?

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6001/204.abstract

Deep-Sea Oil Plume Enriches Indigenous Oil-Degrading Bacteria

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2zNLQ2eDI84J:en.wikinews.org/wiki/Oil-eating_microbe_found_in_the_Gulf_of_Mexico+deep+sea+oil+eating+organisms&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Sample analysis was eased because the researchers used the pocket-sized Berkeley Lab DNA sampler PhyloChip. It allowed researchers to detect the presence of thousands of species of bacteria in samples from a wide range of environmental sources, without the culturing procedures usually performed in a furnished lab workplace. With the device, Hazen and his co-researchers discovered that a dominant microbe, making up 90 percent of all the bacteria in the oil plume, is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales family, more specifically Oleispirea antarctica and Oceaniserpentilla haliotis.

The previous works were measuring low levels of oxygen in certain areas to detect microbes activity. Researchers thought that increased activity would lead to more aerobic activities, such as breathing, which depletes the oxygen content in water. However, the newly discovered species doesn't seem to be consuming much oxygen from the water column. The study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67-percent, while within the plume, it was 59-percent. By Terry Hazen's words, "The low concentrations of iron in seawater may have prevented oxygen concentrations dropping more precipitously from biodegradation demand on the petroleum, since many hydrocarbon-degrading enzymes have iron as a component... There's not enough iron to form more of these enzymes, which would degrade the carbon faster but also consume more oxygen."

Analysis of changes in the oil composition as the plume extended from the wellhead pointed to faster than expected biodegradation rates with the half-life of alkanes ranging from 1.2 to 6.1 days. This microbe thrives in cold water, with temperatures in the deep recorded at 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit).

I think you understand the difference between dispersed oil that has moved from 5,000 ft to about 3,000 feet and is moving in the water table in terms of oil content, oxygen avalibility, and collecting dead organic material (though I still reject that the decreased oxygen levels in the presence of oil and dispersants was fine for the normal life that lives in the gulf and encountered these plumes).

And as I've already said in this thread a dead zone doesn't literally mean nothing lives there. There will be things that thrive in low O high C environments. They just aren't the things that have historically thrived in the majority of the bottom of the Gulf.

Well, the easy answer is that we need to bring oxygen down or bring the oil up to the surface.

Though realistically nobody knows what the effects of doing those are going to be. Sometimes the top layer of dirt isn't the same as the underneath layers so removing the top layer isn't good, and for some organisms oxygen is more toxic than oil so unless you have a mechanism to slowly and evenly release oxygen at 5,000 feet you might kill things that you actually need/want there.

We need to have a better idea of what is going on down there to start to talk about what to do. What I'd like to see is for the next 1-18 months gathering information in terms of what is happening down there. Taking samples on a weekly basis through and outside of the kill zone in terms of organic material at different levels in the soil and oxygen levels. This'll give us a better idea of what is actually going on there and how to aid in the metabolism of this oil and other organic material, and the long term return of the area to its "normal" ecology.

In addition, we need a larger survey of the gulf floor further out from this kill zone because I believe as the plumes moved away from the source, the lighter stuff will have moved to the surface and evaporated, the "middle" weight stuff will have been digested (its easier to handle), and the heavier stuff that made it into the plume, without the lighter stuff, the heavier stuff won't have had the velocity to escape and ended up sinking. Further out from this major kill zone, we are going to see patches of kill zones, I believe (the real big question is here is hurricanes in terms of mixing the water and spreading organic material and distributing oxygen, and active hurricane season in the Gulf this year would really help (the bottom of the gulf, not the people living there)).

Of course, we can't do this because we don't have the resources to do these things at 5,000 feet to the extent they need to be done.

[twa]

Of course, we can't do this because we don't have the resources to do these things at 5,000 feet to the extent they need to be done.

Well that is one benefit from the disaster,our deepwater capabilities and data base are being expanded finally(much of it at BP's expense)

http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/file/Commdocs/hearings/2010/Energy/9jun/Joye_Testimony.pdf

The results so far show no need for oxygenating(from what I see)

Wouldn't trying to remove the heavier hydrocarbons that have settled result in more damage?(especially since sea life has been shown to thrive around asphalt flows and seeps)

I certainly agree with Joyce(and you) we need more data and capabilities,not on her timeline for natural remediation.

The additional deepwater capabilities and data will lead to some unrelated discoveries of import as well.

added

I will add what is being described as oil would not be recognized as oil in normal circumstances.

The PAH's are the critical factor and I wish they would release some data there

---------- Post added December-11th-2010 at 09:01 AM ----------

I'll use this quote to illustrate the hammer/nail analogy(which is what I fear)

We need to transition from spin to science here. Thats very important. And I think this is kind of historic opportunity to really show the importance of science in responding to an emergency of this type.Professor MACDONALD

[PeterMP]

Well that is one benefit from the disaster,our deepwater capabilities and data base are being expanded finally(much of it at BP's expense)

http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/file/Commdocs/hearings/2010/Energy/9jun/Joye_Testimony.pdf

The results so far show no need for oxygenating(from what I see)

Wouldn't trying to remove the heavier hydrocarbons that have settled result in more damage?(especially since sea life has been shown to thrive around asphalt flows and seeps)

I certainly agree with Joyce(and you) we need more data and capabilities,not on her timeline for natural remediation.

The additional deepwater capabilities and data will lead to some unrelated discoveries of import as well.

added

I will add what is being described as oil would not be recognized as oil in normal circumstances.

The PAH's are the critical factor and I wish they would release some data there

---------- Post added December-11th-2010 at 09:01 AM ----------

I'll use this quote to illustrate the hammer/nail analogy(which is what I fear)

We need to transition from spin to science here. Thats very important. And I think this is kind of historic opportunity to really show the importance of science in responding to an emergency of this type.Professor MACDONALD

The things that are going to live on the remaining hydrocarbons at 5,000 feet are not the things that normally live there. Again, there are things that thrive in dead zones. Just because something is thriving there doesn't mean it what was thriving there or that conditions are going to return to normal after is done thriving there, or that the change in the ecology at that site isn't going to affect other ecological zones.

Having them there might aid you in returning things to normal in the longer term, especially as compared of removing the top level of sediment depending on the make of different layers of sediments, which is why I said we need to have data at different levels in the soil inside and out of the kill zone as a function of time.

[twa]

From my limited understanding those dead zone critters actually stimulate the more normal sea creatures....normal being relative

anyhoo a bump for this

Oil Spill Hysteria

The Gulf of Mexico suffered remarkably little damage. Why were so many so willing to believe otherwise?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/oil-spill-hysteria_522140.html?page=1

Oddly enough, however, the ecosystem of the Gulf itself turns out to have suffered remarkably little damage from the continuous gushing of oil into the water from April 20 till July 15, when the leaking well was capped. One group of scientists rated the health of the Gulf’s ecology at 71 on a scale of 100 before the spill and 65 in October. By mid-August, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was having trouble finding spilled oil. This squared with the finding of researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California that the half-life of much of the leaking oil was about three days. At that rate, more than 90 percent would have disappeared in 12 days.

NOAA explained one reason for this in a report in August: “It is well known that bacteria that break down the dispersed and weathered surface oil are abundant in the Gulf of Mexico in large part because of the warm water, the favorable nutrient and oxygen levels, and the fact that oil regularly enters the Gulf of Mexico through natural seeps.” In other words, the organisms that normally live off the Gulf’s large natural seepage of oil into the water multiplied extremely rapidly and went on a feeding frenzy. Another 25 percent of the spilled oil—the lightest and most toxic part—simply evaporated at the surface or dissolved quickly.

Damage to wildlife, too, was relatively sparse. As of November 2, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported that 2,263 oil-soiled bird remains had been collected in the Gulf, far fewer than the 225,000 birds killed by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989. Despite fears for turtles, only 18 dead oil-soiled turtles had been found. No other reptile deaths were recorded. While more than 1,000 sea otters alone had died in the Alaska spill, only 4 oil-soiled mammals (including dolphins) had been found dead in the Gulf region. These are very small numbers relative to the base populations. Similarly, government agencies were unable to find any evidence of dead fish. Fish can simply swim away from trouble. Nor was evidence found of contamination of live fish. In one government test, 2,768 chemical analyses uncovered no signs of contamination.

In the latest irony, marine biologists this fall have actually been seeing surprising increases in some fish populations. It seems that the closure of large areas of the Gulf to fishing amounted to an unplanned experiment in fisheries management. According to Sean Powers, a University of South Alabama marine biologist, “It’s just been amazing how many more sharks we are seeing this year. I didn’t believe it at first.” He attributed the change to the “incredible reduction in fishing pressure,” and added, “What’s interesting to me [is that] we are seeing it across the whole range, from the shrimp and small croaker all the way up to the large sharks.”

[China]

Panel challenges Gulf seafood safety all-clear

'It is unethical to experiment with the health of the U.S. population or military members,' toxicologist says

A New Orleans law firm is challenging government assurances that Gulf Coast seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the BP oil spill, saying it poses “a significant danger to public health.”

It’s a high-stakes tug-of-war that will almost certainly end up in the courts, with two armies of scientists arguing over technical findings that could have real-world impact for seafood consumers and producers.

Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing — examining fewer samples but more comprehensively — shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage.

“What we have found is that FDA simply overlooked an important aspect of safety in their protocol,” contends William Sawyer, a Florida-based toxicologist on Smith’s team. “We now have a sufficient number of samples to provide FDA with probable cause to include such testing, really. They need to go back and test some of their archived samples as well.”

Click on the link for the full article

[Predicto]

twa has given us the National Review take on this event, followed by the Weekly Standard take on the event.

Why are you holding back the Heritage Foundation scientific reports?

[twa]

Liberals hating science.....

the weekly standard author

Robert H. Nelson is a professor of environmental policy at the University of Maryland, a senior fellow with the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and the author, most recently, of The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America.

the National review quoting

The Dauphin Island Sea Lab, a teaching and research consortium of 22 colleges and universities in Alabama, ran the fish-population study. Asked why the group has been virtually invisible in the national media, Valentine says that, unlike some scientists, they refrained from speculating about the impact of the spill until they had real evidence.

added

Not a word about a law firms experts (China's link) that has to go 2x the limits allowed by federal regulation to try to scare up some suits??

[Predicto]

Liberals hating science.....

the weekly standard author

Robert H. Nelson is a professor of environmental policy at the University of Maryland, a senior fellow with the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and the author, most recently, of The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America.

Oh, an economist who is a member of a libertarian thinktank and who has written a book about how environmentalism is just a false religion. I thought you were saying he was a "scientist."

the National review quoting

The Dauphin Island Sea Lab, a teaching and research consortium of 22 colleges and universities in Alabama, ran the fish-population study. Asked why the group has been virtually invisible in the national media, Valentine says that, unlike some scientists, they refrained from speculating about the impact of the spill until they had real evidence.

I'm more interested in the spin by Lou Dolinar and the National Review. The Dauphin Island Sea Lab didn't write that editorial, did it?

Not a word about a law firms experts (China's link) that has to go 2x the limits allowed by federal regulation to try to scare up some suits??

I didn't comment on that because I didn't see it. But the idea of profiteering attorneys hardly surprises me.

[twa]

I'm more interested in the spin by Lou Dolinar and the National Review. The Dauphin Island Sea Lab didn't write that editorial, did it?

They were part of it...do you dispute their findings?

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/11/alabama_scientists_find_more_e.html

[Predicto]

They were part of it...do you dispute their findings?

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/11/alabama_scientists_find_more_e.html

Not at all. But the scientists' findings (that plankton ate some of the oil and there are still fish there) has very little to do with the National Review spin ("The Great Oil Spill Panic of 2010 will go down in history as mass hysteria on par with the Dutch tulip bubble").

You think the two assertions are the same thing, but they are not.

[twa]

Ya gotta admit the panic mongers were preaching fire and brimstone

The microbes ate a ****load of oil and the fish are doing OK

(had some Gulf shrimp last night)