Today, I spoke with Northern Gulf Institute
Director, John Harding, who researched the effect of the BP Oil Spill. He told
me the Gulf has been able to handle the spill because of oil-eating bacteria
that have naturally habited there because the Gulf floor has oil that naturally
flows out of the ground. When the spill occurred this bacteria multiplied.
According to Harding, in some ways it hurt the people there
more than the gulf itself because no one wanted to buy fish out of the gulf
after the spill so all the fishermen had a really hard time. Because NOAA put limitations
on the areas of fishing due to pollution, some areas with no fishing are now
seeing some of the largest fish in ages.
I mean in no way to downsize the effect of the spill. Marine
and mammal life were both greatly impacted by this preventable disaster. I just
wanted to add this new insight.
To check out what these microbes actually are, you can check
out this link.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow/gulf-oil-eating-microbes-slide-show/
No comments:
Post a Comment