To access the “hot links” in this article, click the American Thinker link below. bttt
November 15, 2010 4:00 A.M.
Sea Life Flourishes in the Gulf
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253233/sea-life-flourishes-gulf-lou-dolinar
The Great Oil Spill Panic of 2010 will go down in history as mass hysteria on par with the Dutch tulip bubble.
The catastrophists were wrong (again) about the Deep Water Horizon oil spill.
There have been no major fish die-offs. On the contrary, a comprehensive new study says that in some of the most heavily fished areas of the Gulf of Mexico, various forms of sea life, from shrimp to sharks, have seen their populations triple since before the spill. Some species, including shrimp and croaker, did even better.
And meanwhile, the media has greatly exaggerated damage found in studies about coral, which is in some ways more vulnerable to oil and dispersant. Most of it is doing fine.
The growth of the fish population is not occurring because oil is good for fish. Rather, it is occurring because fishing is bad for fish. When fishing was banned for months during the spill, the Gulf of Mexico experienced an unprecedented marine renaissance that overwhelmed any negative environmental consequences the oil may have had, researchers say.
Even the researchers themselves, however, were surprised by the results. “We expected there to be virtually no fish out there based on all the reports we were getting about the toxicity of the dispersant and the toxicity of the hydrocarbons, and reports that hypoxia [low oxygen] had been created as a result of the oil and dispersant,” says John Valentine, who directed the study. “In every way you can imagine, it should have been a hostile environment for fish and crabs; our collection showed that was not the case.”
Also surprising was how quickly the populations grew. “In the cosmic scheme of things, a matter of four or five months led to this huge difference in everything, sharks, fish of all forms, even the juvenile fish found in sea-grass beds. That’s a pretty interesting and unanticipated outcome, I would say,” says Valentine. The surge is so robust, he says, that it may be impossible to determine whether the oil spill has had any effect on sea life at all.
Valentine says the study doesn’t let BP off the hook Gulf fishermen have suffered real and costly damage from the closure and from what he calls the “sociological phenomenon” that’s scared consumers away from Gulf seafood. But nor does it excuse President Obama’s disastrous panic and overreaction in temporarily banning oil drilling in the Gulf, especially since official reports are now saying that the oil will be disposed of naturally, as experts predicted. Oil is being measured in parts per billion meaning the water is safe enough to drink and very little has been found on the ocean bottom. Much of it has been eaten by bacteria native to the Gulf’s oil seeps, and another new study shows that other microscopic creatures including flagellates and ciliates ate the bacteria, and in turn provided food for plankton.
The Dauphin Island Sea Lab, a teaching and research consortium of 22 colleges and universities in Alabama, ran the fish-population study. Asked why the group has been virtually invisible in the national media, Valentine says that, unlike some scientists, they refrained from speculating about the impact of the spill until they had real evidence.
Although the early report has not been peer reviewed, it is credible this kind of research isn’t anything new for the Sea Lab folks. They’ve been conducting surveys off the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama for years, which gives them a baseline with which to compare the post-spill numbers. Their methodology is powerful because it is simple and straightforward: They drag a net through eleven different survey sites up to 60 miles off the coast, then weigh, classify, and count the critters they snare.
According to Valentine, the last word will come in the spring before heavy commercial fishing begins again with a follow-up study. Already, however, anecdotal reports support the finding: Darrell Carpenter, president of the Louisiana Charter Boat Association, was recently quoted as saying, “The fish are off the charts. There are no fewer fish. There are more fish, because they’ve been un-harassed all summer. There are more and bigger fish.” NOAA has said there have been no fish kills tied to oil, has certified seafood in the Gulf as safe, and has reopened most of the water there for fishing.
Fish and shrimp aren’t the only creatures that have survived the spill. Two other recent reports have looked at what happened to deep sea-coral formations, which, unlike fish, can’t get out of the way of toxins or water low in oxygen. Media outlets including the New York Times recently ran stories about a dying patch of coral that was found, coated with an unidentified material, seven miles from the Deepwater site.
Its passing would be tragic; some of these coral colonies may be hundreds of years old, and there’s no telling how long it would take for them to regenerate. What most outlets didn’t report, however, was that 16 other surveyed sites, including one ten miles away from the well head, are doing just fine, along with the fish, crustaceans, and other creatures that live there, according to Charles Fisher, the marine biologist from Penn State who headed the expedition. Researchers from the Center for Marine Science at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington who hitched a ride with the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise in October also failed to find any coral damage.
Interestingly enough, the researchers tracked down coral sites by looking for old hydrocarbon seeps, a common feature of the Gulf that exude millions of gallons of oil and methane annually. Over millennia, Fisher says, “the seep conditions promote rock growth and corals like rock.” That’s yet another indication, like the vast clouds of oil-eating bacteria that live in those seeps and that disposed of the spill, of how deeply hydrocarbons are entwined in the Gulf’s ecosystem.
The site of the damage was small compared with some of the areas studied, about 15 by 40 meters with a few outlying colonies, mostly sea fans. “Many colonies are only partially dead at this point. If in fact they stop dying and little bits are left alive, we may see regeneration when we get back,” Dr. Fisher says. He plans another cruise to reexamine the area and look for more coral sites close to the well head. At that point, based on the location of other coral die-offs, we should have a fair idea of the area most impacted by the spill.
These new studies are more bad news for headline-hunting journalists and the establishment environmentalists who have been cheering for the death of the Gulf of Mexico in service of their green agenda.
Real science (as opposed to media events that somehow never produce verifiable results) has made it increasingly clear that the doomsday scenarios they promoted will not come to pass.
As word spreads that fish populations have increased, the alarmists and conspiracy theorists won’t just be wrong, they will be laughingstocks. The Great Oil Spill Panic of 2010 will go down in history as mass hysteria on par with the Dutch tulip bubble.
– Lou Dolinar is a retired columnist and reporter for Newsday. He is currently working on a book about what really happened in the Deepwater Horizon spill.
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I urge everyone who thinks Obama and his administration did a “bang up” job on the oil spill to read the following: http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/
They have been documenting, chapter and verse, the fallout. And it ain’t pretty, folks.
New deepwater drilling permits: Zilch
Relief wells were drilled this summer to stop the BP spill, which led to a shut down in Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling. By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.comNovember 12, 2010: 9:14 AM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/12/news/economy/offshore_drilling_moratorium/index.htm
Picture: Deepwater Oilrig
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/2010/11/12/news/economy/offshore_drilling_moratorium/deepwater_oilrig.gi.top.jpg
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — President Obama lifted his moratorium on deepwater oil drilling nearly a month ago, but the government still hasn’t issued any new permits in the Gulf of Mexico.
And most analysts say permits will be slow in coming through 2011.
The Interior Department halted deep water permits shortly after BP’s Macondo well blew out last April. The accident resulted in the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
The moratorium was lifted in mid-October after government officials were confident new, stricter rules and regulations were in place.
But no new permits for wells covered under the ban have been issued, according to a spokeswoman for the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement.
“[BOEMRE director Michael] Bromwich has indicated that he hopes to see some approved by the end of the year but cannot speculate,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.
Even if a few permits come through, analysts say it will be a far cry from the amount issued pre-spill.
“We’re not holding our breath for a return to business as usual,” Whitney Stanco, and energy analyst at the Washington Research Group, wrote in a recent research note. “Despite pressure from Gulf state lawmakers and the oil and gas industry, we believe permitting in 2011 will likely be slower than it has been in recent years.”
The moratorium did not affect current oil production in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, which comes from wells that have already been drilled. Currently, about a quarter of the nation’s five-million-barrel-a-day crude output comes from the deepwater Gulf, according to the Government’s Energy Information Administration.
But future output could fall if new wells aren’t drilled. EIA predicts U.S. output will drop by about 170,000 barrels a day in 2011 thanks to the ban.
With Republicans taking over the House, it’s possible that the generally more pro-drilling lawmakers will push the administration to issue more permits.
“You could see hearings in the first quarter of the year,” said Kevin Shaw, an energy lawyer at the law firm Mayer Brown. “But it will just be a stick to beat the administration with. I’m not expecting a much different outcome.”
0:00 /:59BP’s rebound
Indeed, analysts say most lawmakers will be reluctant to push the Interior Department to issue permits faster than it thinks it can safely do so.
“What happened this summer was pretty dramatic,” said Joseph Stanislaw, an independent energy adviser at Deloitte & Touche. “I think everyone agrees that people really need to work out the rules.”
That’s tough news to the people who do the actual drilling.
“What’s going on over here is a whole lot of nothing,” said Jim Noe, and executive at Hercules offshore, who said they are still having a hard time getting permits even for shallow water wells.
Noe said they haven’t had to lay off too many people yet, and have kept workers busy doing maintenance work and other jobs. But the longer the permit drought continues, the harder it gets.
“We’re not optimistic we’ll be back in business in a meaningful way anytime soon,” he said. [bttt]
