Friday, August 13, 2010
Dead Fish Are Washing Up Everywhere . . . Is It Due to BP Oil Spill and Dispersants?
Washington's Blog
Dead fish are washing up everywhere.
For example, numerous dead fish washed ashore in Massachusetts a couple of days ago:
Dead fish had washed up in New Jersey yesterday.
Hundreds of thousands of dead fish washed up today in New Jersey, and even the birds wouldn't eat them:
(The second report in this video compilation - referring to a ripped fishing net - is actually from Virginia, some 210 miles from the scene of the first report in New Jersey. The size of the Virginia fish incident was much smaller than the one in New Jersey.)
And they have washed up in Mississippi as well.
There are also several reports of tar balls washing up on beaches prior to fish or crab kills. See this and this. And see this.
Scientists attribute the dead fish to low oxygen levels in the Gulf of Mexico.
Indeed, scientists have been warning about this for months. For example, on May 16th, the New York Times wrote:
Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
Read Full Article With Links HERE
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