{"id":3298,"date":"2010-11-07T00:59:45","date_gmt":"2010-11-07T07:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3298"},"modified":"2010-11-07T01:16:22","modified_gmt":"2010-11-07T08:16:22","slug":"a-crisis-in-coral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/07\/a-crisis-in-coral\/","title":{"rendered":"A Crisis in Coral?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Along with many others, I have been distrustful of the officially sanctioned news coming from the Gulf of Mexico.\u00a0 I have opined that it will take at least a generation to repair the damage from the massive oil spill made possible by Republican deregulation of drilling practices, as pushed by Cheney, and the abject failure of Ken Salazar to do his job.\u00a0 In May, I stated my concern that, since the dispersant BP used in huge quantities is lethal to coral, it could bring about the loss of Florida’s reef system<\/a>, aka the Keys.\u00a0 Those reefs are the home of thousands of species found nowhere else on earth.\u00a0 We harvest some our most advanced medicines from some of those species.\u00a0 In addition, the loss of the Keys would change the flow of the Gulf Stream and hasten a catastrophic change in climate.\u00a0 For the first time, damaged corals have been found in the Gulf.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"7coral\"For the first time, federal scientists have found damage to deep sea coral and other marine life on the ocean floor several miles from the blown-out BP well – a strong indication that damage from the spill could be significantly greater than officials had previously acknowledged<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Tests are needed<\/strong> to verify that the coral died from oil that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, but the chief scientist who led the government-funded expedition said Friday he was convinced it was related.<\/p>\n

“What we have at this point is the smoking gun,” said Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who led the expedition aboard the Ronald Brown, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel.<\/p>\n

“There is an abundance of circumstantial data that suggests that what happened is related to the recent oil spill<\/strong>,” Fisher said.<\/p>\n

For the government, the findings were a departure from earlier statements. Until now, federal teams have painted relatively rosy pictures about the spill’s effect on the sea and its ecosystem, saying they had not found any damage on the ocean floor.<\/p>\n

In early August, a federal report said that nearly 70 percent of the 170 million gallons of oil that gushed from the well into the sea had dissolved naturally, or was burned, skimmed, dispersed or captured, with almost nothing left to see – at least on top of the water. The report was blasted by scientists.<\/p>\n

Most of the Gulf’s bottom is muddy, but coral colonies that pop up every once in a while are vital oases for marine life in the chilly ocean depths.<\/p>\n

Coral is essential to the Gulf because it provides a habitat for fish and other organisms such as snails and crabs, making any large-scale death of coral a problem for many species. It might need years, or even decades, to grow back<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Common Dreams<\/a>><\/p>\n

This discovery in no way proves my fears, but it keeps them well within the realm of possibility.\u00a0 We need to determine whether or not BP killed this coral and then determine how widespread the damage is.\u00a0 Since I lack the scientific expertise to recommend how to prevent further damage, I\u2019ll leave that to the scientists, but something must be done, and done quickly.\u00a0 You know that when the next session of Congress begins, House Republicans will rusk to defund all skience [Republican spelling], protect BP from liability, and take the ostrich approach to this problem.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Along with many others, I have been distrustful of the officially sanctioned news coming from the Gulf of Mexico.\u00a0 I have opined that it will take at least a generation to repair the damage from the massive oil spill made possible by Republican deregulation of drilling practices, as pushed by Cheney, and the abject failure […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}