Deep sea ecosystem may take decades to recover from Deepwater Horizon spill

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http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130924_dwh_ecosystem.html



Deep sea ecosystem may take decades to recover from Deepwater Horizon spill
Scientists publish first analysis of post spill sediment ecosystem impacts surrounding well head

September 24, 2013

The deep­sea soft-sediment ecosystem in the immediate area of the 2010’s Deepwater Horizon well head blowout and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will likely take decades to recover from the spill’s impacts, according to a scientific paper reported in the online
scientific journal PLoS One.

The paper is the first to give comprehensive results of the spill’s effect on deep­water
communities at the base of the Gulf’s food chain, in its soft­bottom muddy habitats, specifically
looking at biological composition and chemicals at the same time at the same location.

“This is not yet a complete picture,” said Cynthia Cooksey, NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal
Ocean Science lead scientist for the spring 2011 cruise to collect additional data from the sites
sampled in fall 2010. “We are now in the process of analyzing data collected from a subsequent
cruise in the spring of 2011. Those data will not be available for another year, but will also
inform how we look at conditions over time.”

“As the principal investigators, we were tasked with determining what impacts might have occurred to the sea floor from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,” said Paul Montagna, Ph.D., Endowed Chair for Ecosystems and Modeling at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University­Corpus Christi. “We developed an innovative approach to combine tried and true classical statistical techniques with state of the art mapping technologies to create a map of the footprint of the oil spill.”

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