The effects of this infamous oil spill are still being felt more than a decade later.
Excerpt from this story from Gizmodo:
An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010. New research chronicles the fate of the oil that wasn’t cleaned up.
The leaked oil spread far and wide, affecting marine life at depth and at the surface, including dolphins, birds, turtles, and even microorganisms. Massive cleanup and containment measures were implemented (some 47,000 people were involved at the peak), but copious amounts of oil still managed to escape and pollute the surrounding areas.
Scientists are still seeking to understand the full extent of the disaster, along with the ultimate fate of the oil that couldn’t be cleaned up. An overview published this past March in the science journal Oceanography shed new light on this ongoing story and the various biogeochemical processes that affected the escaped oil.
As Farrington and his colleagues learned, a significant portion of the unrecovered oil made its way to the surface, where it became exposed to sunlight. A process called photooxidation changed the oil’s chemistry, transforming it into all sorts of unsavory compounds—some of which managed to become airborne. Photooxidation, as the scientists wrote, was “a significant process acting on the surface oil slick very early in the spill,” and it “played a significant role in the fate of the spilled oil.”
Natural “marine snow” also came into contact with the spilled oil. Marine snow is falling bits of matter, including poop and decaying bits of sea creatures and plants, but in this case the scientists had to describe it as “marine oil snow,” the accumulation of which led to “marine oil snow sedimentation” on the seafloor. This unholy mixture spread “into the food webs of water column ecosystems,” the scientists wrote. Many deep sea animals are now feeding on this gunk, including corals, squid, fish, and sharks. Humans could also be ingesting some of this oil by consuming seafood sourced from the affected regions. Research published last year shows that so-called “invisible oil” means the spill extended to regions as far away as Texas and the East Florida shelf.
