What are the long term effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

This whole article is interesting reading. It discusses all of the ongoing studies:

“Gulf of Mexico shrimp, along with all seafood, has been tested extensively to assure that it’s safe for consumption in the wake of the BP oil spill, but the long-term effects on fish species from that oil, and the chemicals used to fight it, are still largely unknown.”

“LSU released a study showing that the Gulf killifish, a marsh minnow known locally as cocahoe, showed signs of hydrocarbon poisoning. But Andrew Whitehead, lead author of the study, made clear that the species would have to be monitored for several more years to know whether it would affect the species’ reproduction and population levels.”

The toll any toxic spill takes on sea life is not good, ever. I have washed oil soaked sea birds before years ago for a wild life rescue in Southern California. Dying from crude oil poisoning as a water bird is a terrible way to go. If they don’t starve to death from being grounded with oil soaked feathers they die from toxic absorbtion of the oil.
Tragic, but us humans, we’re hell bent on our own extinction, clearly.

I wish I could discuss this, but I am legally bound not to. Sucks. That is all I can say.

I have seen the commercials on tv for the Gulf Coast tourism industry & it is, basically, just PR for BP. They talk about how the tourists are flocking back to the beaches, but they do NOT show the oil ravaged wetlands, & they do NOT talk about the layer of oil that is still on the floor of the Gulf, nor do they talk about the damage done to the marine life that depends upon the ocean. They do NOT talk about the toxic chemical dispersant that was used to break up the oil slicks. This toxic chemical dispersant has been responsible for damaging the health of the people who were working to clean up the oil. It is going to take YEARS for the Gulf to recover & it may never recover because the BP “spill” was just the most visible incident in an on-going list of oil spill incidents. Now we are going to be seeing spills like the BP “spill” in the Arctic Circle, where the very real possibility will be that nothing will be able to be done about the spill because the conditions are so harsh & drilling companies have no idea how to stop a ‘blow-out’ like the BP “spill” in the Arctic.

It may take a century to really find out…assuming the Mayans were wrong.

How appropriate is it that @marinelife gives the definitive answer?

@cazzie I’m not sure how you’ve come to find yourself caught in this legal net where truth can be suppressed, but I’m sure you have legal obligations to your fellow man. I hope you’ll find a way to set the truth free.

If you take a long enough view, then effects are negligible.

So, by “long term” do you mean 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 25 years, 100 years, or what?

I think it important to realize that oil, natural gas, and other “fossil fuels” are natural products of the Earth. It sucks when we spill it all over the place, of course, but it’s not nearly as bad as some of the nuclear-toxic, man-made, don’t-even-look-at-it-or-you-might-die kinds of artificial compounds that we produce.

And it’s amazing how fast the Earth can recover from the “bad” things it produces itself. Look at volcanoes, undersea heat vents, hurricanes, wild fires, tornadoes, etc. They’re all destructive… and yet they are all also necessary to maintain the variation of life we see on this planet.

If you take a long enough long term view then nothing we do matters but we can’t live like that. We have to take responsibility for what we do and understand the effects of what we do. The Deepwater Horizon disaster wasn’t a natural disaster it was manmade and the recently announced oil leasing plan opens up more areas in the Gulf and the Arctic to exploration. I don’t think I am being pessimistic when I say we can expect more ‘accidents’ to occur. After all in the long term it doesn’t matter.

In the meantime “disturbing numbers of mutated fish are appearing in the Gulf. Scientists and fishermen are pointing to the BP oil spill, the dispersants and chemicals used in its cleanup as the cause of these deformities which include shrimp born without eyes, fish with lesions, fish with oozing sores and, according to a local fisher-woman, “We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes… they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals”. Wikipedia

@Bagardbilla I can tell you that hubby works for a company that was contracted to do work on the Deepwater Horizon and that he spent 2 weeks on that platform. (there but by the grace of a goddess…. my husband could have been on that platform when it went up.) Let us not forget the 11 men who died.