-- Horatio Algeranon
Half a life
Is not that long
Before it's mostly
Up and gone.
If you can't see it,
You won't feel it
It's not a good thing
To reveal it.
Has BP Really Cleaned Up the Gulf Oil Spill? "Officially, marine life is returning to normal in the Gulf of Mexico, but dead animals are still washing up on beaches – and one scientist believes the damage runs much deeper" (by Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian) "On her descent to a location 10 miles from BP's well in December, [Marine scientist Dr. Samantha] Joye landed on an ocean floor coated with dark brown muck about 4cm deep. Thick ropes of slime draped across coral like cobwebs in a haunted house. The few creatures that remained alive, such as the crabs, were too listless to flee. "Most of the time when you go at them with a submarine, they just run," she says. "They weren't running, they were just sitting there, dazed and stupefied. They certainly weren't behaving as normal." Her conclusion? "I think it is not beyond the imagination that 50% of the oil is still floating around out there."
At a time when the White House, Congress, government officials and oil companies are trying to put the oil disaster behind them, that is not the message from the deep that people are waiting to hear. Joye's data – and an outspoken manner for a scientist – have pitted her against the Obama administration's scientists as well as other independent scientists who have come to different conclusions about the state of the Gulf. She is consumed by the idea that she – and other colleagues – are not really being heard.
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Marine scientist Dr. Samantha Joye has spent nearly half her life* studying the Gulf Of Mexico. After many others decamped when the BP well was "capped", she stayed to study the oil's long term impacts -- despite the fact that some had assured her that the oil was mostly gone, or at least no longer a significant threat (read
Mission Accomplished).
*And you thought "Half Life" was a reference to the Japanese nuclear disaster, didn't you now? ~@:>
Among other things, Dr. Joye's team of scientists were the first to document the presence of a large "oil plume" during the ongoing BP oilcano. Dr. Joye (and others) also documented
the presence of an oil layer on the sea floor in the months after the well was "capped".
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While it might be completely unrelated, in recent months, anomalous numbers of dead dolphins and sea turtles (some of them contaminated with oil) have been washing up on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. It's still too early to say why they died (that requires autopsies and even then we may never know for sure) but the occurrence is nonetheless out of the ordinary.
"Dead baby bottlenose dolphins are continuing to wash up in record numbers on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and scientists do not know why.
Since February 2010 to April 2011, 406 dolphins were found either stranded or reported dead offshore.
The occurrence has prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to designate these deaths as an "unusual mortality event" or UME
Similar to the dolphin deaths, an abnormally high number of turtles have been found either floating close to shore or washed up on shores in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
The vast majority of these are dead,"
