Gulf Spill Wildlife Disaster Lurking Below the Surface

(May 18) -- The Gulf of Mexico oil spill doesn't yet have the sort of tragic poster animals like oil-slicked birds by the hundreds of thousands. But federal officials and environmentalists say the impact of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon spill on everything from sperm whales to plankton will be a serious one.

"This spill is significant," Rowan Gould, acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said at a news conference today. "It will affect fish and wildlife resources ... for years, if not decades."

So far, 162 sea turtles -- primarily the endangered Kemp's ridley -- have been found stranded along the coastline, said Steve Murawski, director of scientific programs and chief science adviser for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries service.

All but six of the turtles have died. Necropsies -- an animal version of autopsies -- are being done to find out if they were oil-related deaths. The average rate of stranded sea turtles in May is 47.

Twelve stranded bottlenose dolphins have been found as well.

Gould said only 35 oiled birds have been found, 23 of them dead. But recent bad weather has meant there has been little opportunity to search for other oiled birds.

The Gulf of Mexico spill is the largest catastrophe for wildlife in decades, according to Doug Inkley of the National Wildlife Federation. He worries that if its impact is more subtle than scores of oiled birds, the public won't understand the extent of the damage. Unlike the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, where the oil spilled quickly and then washed ashore, the Deepwater Horizon contamination is hanging around in the gulf and polluting the water column all the way to the ocean floor.

"It's spilling a mile deep. There are critters that live down there," Inkley said in an interview. "There is potentially a huge impact on our marine environment that we can't see quite simply because we can't swim. It's a huge unknown that's hard to assess."

The hard-to-see effects include:

• The oil as well as the dispersants being used on it are toxic, Inkley said, and disrupt the food chain, starting with plankton. Fewer plankton means less food for smaller fish, which in turn means less food for bigger fish.
  
• Female loggerhead turtles take 35 years to develop, which means that hatchlings killed by oil this year will cause decades of reduced population, Inkley said.
  
• Blue fin and yellow fin tuna are among the species spawning right now in the gulf, and federal officials are worried about the impact on their delicate offspring. In Prince William Sound off Alaska, Inkley said, the herring population still hasn't recovered from the Valdez spill 20 years ago because so many larvae and eggs were destroyed.
  
• Many of the birds and marine mammals that spend time near the spill could die without being detected because they are so far from shore.
  
• The majority of the oil hasn't washed ashore but much of it still could -- just as brown pelicans and other shorebirds are breeding. "They will bear the brunt," Gould said.
  
• Many migratory birds are farther north now, which is a lucky break, federal officials said. But next winter they will have to pass through the area again and could be exposed to contamination.

Roger Helm, chief of the division of environmental quality at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said BP, as the polluter, is responsible for paying for the investigation into the extent of environmental damage and for restoration.

Federal officials said it could take years before the full extent of the damage -- and the price tag -- are known. "This is like a cloud hanging offshore," Debra Parsons-Drake of the Humane Society of the United States said in an interview with AOL News.

Last week, standing on a beach in Louisiana, she could scarcely believe that the seemingly pristine vista was part of a looming disaster. Until the wind shifted, bringing in the aroma of oil.

"Because it's been offshore and people aren't seeing it, it's hard to imagine what you don't know," Parsons-Drake said.