I love all the speculation in that article. Not saying the oil spill didn't have its effects, but they are making statements with nothing behind them. My favorite one was about the seaside sparrows. BP basically stated that there were no severe effects, but the article says seaside sparrow populations are down. Seaside sparrows have never been an abundant species. They rely on salt marsh habitat. Coastal marshes were disappearing before the Deep Horizon disaster. Speculative.
Same with the Mangrove island disappearing. Did the oil spill have an effect? I don't doubt it, but is that the only reason marshes and mangroves are disappearing? Hardly. Wetlands are complex systems, and one factor alone, unless that factor be a hurricane, is rarely responsible. Rather, multiple factors acting on the system cause dieoffs.
I could see the oil being responsible for some of these things, and short-term it was. But people want to claim everything they see bad to have been the result of the oil spill, and that's just speculation.
I read an article about some fella from Biloxi finding a dead dolphin on Grand Isle supposedly covered with oil. There were also tar balls near by. So, naturally, before any investigation is done, this fella gets his name in the limelight with his "dolphin murdered by oil" story.
I've seen first hand what the oil spill did. I was doing research on the coast in the spring/summer of 2010 and was in a lot of those areas. But a lot of people don't realize how resilient nature is. There will be lasting effects for a long time, no doubt, but nature will bounce back.
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