Oil Spill Disasters

Gulf spill effects largely unknown -NOAA official

Scientific American |

In Brief...

Scientists have only begun to understand the impact of the BP Plc BP. While 37 percent of the Gulf's federal waters were closed to fishing in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, only a fraction of 1 percent remains closed, a small block directly over the BP oil rig's wellhead, said Eric Schwaab, head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service.. But recent NOAA findings, such as dead and dying deepwater coral in the Gulf, make it clear scientists do not know what effect the spill, potentially the worse marine ecology disaster in history, will ultimately have.. NOAA announced earlier this month that one of its research vessels had found dead and dying coral several miles (km) from the well that spilled more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf from late April until mid-July.. Pennsylvania State University marine biologist Charles Fisher, lead scientist on the expedition, called the finding "the smoking gun" of the BP oil spill..

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