BP Spill Caused Death of Coral, Study Says
Effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are still causing great harm to the ecosystems surrounding the spill site, leading to the deaths of large swaths of deep sea coral communities.
Scientists published a study on Monday that confirms samples of oil taken late in 2010 to be that from BP PLC's Macondo well, which ruptured in April of 2010.
The area the samples were taken from is seven miles southwest of the well site. The affected coral covers an area that is nearly the size of a football field more than a mile below the ocean's surface.
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The damaged corals were discovered in October 2010 by academic and government scientists, but it has taken until now to determine a direct link to the oil spill.
Scientists explained that much of the Gulf of Mexico's ocean floor is a vast, muddy emptiness, but that coral communities serve as a deep ocean oasis that supports life deep under water.
According to the study, the coral is in grave shape. The coral by most accounts is dead or dying and is either totally bare or loosely covered in residual tissue or a thick brown substance with the consistency of mucus.
"It was like a graveyard of corals," said Erik Cordes, a biologist at Temple University and one of the researchers who visited the site in the Alvin research submarine.
This is the only study to date which has covered damaged coral communities and this coral site is the only one to be thought to have been seriously damaged by the spill.
On April 20, 2010, the Macondo well located 50 miles off the Louisiana coast ruptured, causing the deaths of 11 workers working on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
The ruptured well took several months to be plugged and released more than 200 million gallons of oil, making the spill the largest offshore oil spill in the nation's history.
