Two years later, fish sick near BP oil spill site

(AP Photo/Courtesy Steven Murawski)

It has been two years since the devistaing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and fishermen and scientists are still reporting sitings of sick fish. Many of them have large open sores, black streaks, and lesions. The oil spill quickly faced the brunt of the blame. But scientists can't definitively say what is actually causing  the diseases because they have no baseline data on sick fish in the Gulf before the spill in order to form a frame of reference. To add to the problem, the gulf is exposed to more and more pollutants every day. But  the suffering fish's diseases are being tied to petroleum and a recent batch of test results revealed the presence of oil in the bile extracted from fish. 


"Bile tells you what a fish's last meal was," said Steve Murawski, a marine biologist with the University of South Florida who was chief science adviser for the National Marine Fisheries Service until November 2010 when he began working on oil spill studies for USF. "There was as late as August of last year an oil source out there that some of those animals were consuming."


Another, more extensive study, was conducted by USF scientists. They caught over 4,000 fish and about 3 percent of them displayed gashes, ulcers and parasites symptomatic of environmental contamination. 1o percent of mud-dwelling fish displayed signs of illness as well. "The closer to the oil rig, the higher frequency was" of sick fish, Murawski, the study leader, said. While past studies conducted in the Atlantic show only 1 percent of fish had been suffering from disease. 


They are seeing many things for the first time, such as fin rot. James Cowan, a reef fish expert at Louisiana State University said, "There is so much in the literature that links exposure to PAHs (the compounds in oil) to exactly what we are seeing: sicknesses, lesions and everything else."


There is more pollution in the Gulf than just the BP spill. Natural oil seeps, pipelines and oil wells and pollution from passing ships, as well as the discharge from the Mississippi River. But now in the past year, research has emerged showing deep-water corals, seaweed beds, inshore bait fish, dolphins and other species were injured by the spill. Nobody will say that the Bp Spill hasn't impacted the Gulf because it clearly has. But many aren't ready to attribute these findings of sick fish to the BP spill even though oil seems to be the main contaminate and we are only 2 years removed from the explosion that caused the spill. The spill wasn't even stopped until 15 months had past. To me, this is just another display of the devestation caused by this disaster. Sadly this problem will continue to harm us for time to come, while BP looks to save money in cleanup efforts even though its their fault that much of the Gulf's pollution can be attributed to the spill. 


Burdeau, Cain . "Two years later, fish sick near BP oil spill site - Yahoo! Finance." Yahoo! Finance - Business Finance, Stock Market, Quotes, News. N.p., 19 Apr. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://finance.yahoo.com/news/two-years-later-fish-sick-140236899.html>.