when the BP oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico began in April
naturally-occurring microbes began their
work gobbling up some of the oil when
the microbes died oxygen in the water is
used up as they decompose scientists
have been concerned that if this
occurred in mass quantities as a serious
consequence of the oil spill it could
create hypoxic or dead zones of low
oxygen in the water well what happens
when you have no oxygen on the bottom
first of all it kills all the critters
that can’t swim away the worms and crabs
in the sediment but it makes this
habitat unavailable it’s like a false
bottom and so they can’t swim down to
the bottom to avoid predators they can’t
get in the cooler water so they’re up in
the surface waters where it’s lighter so
they’re more susceptible to predators
but it’s also warmer so their
metabolisms is higher and they require
more foods Mike Roman and his colleagues
at the University of Maryland’s horn
point laboratory study the dead zone in
the Gulf of Mexico that has occurred
every summer for over 20 years and
extends along the coast from the mouth
of the Mississippi River to Texas this
dead zone is caused by fertilizers and
other chemicals being washed into the
river they have data going back to their
first study in 2003 this year they
looked for any changes due to the spill
we measured these plants and plankton
and fish and the distributions looked
about the same as they would have in
these other years there there was low
oxygen water in the bottom they avoided
it the area wasn’t particularly large
compared to what was predicted we had
sensors that that would detected oil we
didn’t see any oil Roman and his
colleagues use an array of sensitive
devices to measure oxygen levels
salinity temperature and population
density of flora and fauna many of the
measurements come from a device called a
scan fish towed behind a vessel one
device the scientists added to the scan
fish can count ZOA plankton a key
indicator of sea health as is eel
plankton acala just I’m biased but I
also feel like it’s a integral part of
the food web it’s directly between the
primary producers like the algae that
use the Sun for energy and the fish
which are commercially and ecologically
important for various reasons so this
Oh plankton sort of mediate the flow of
energy and the flow of materials from
the primary producers up to the larger
animals peterson says early data doesn’t
indicate any dramatic change due to the
oil at a first glance you know it was a
lot of happy healthy copepods out there
roman pearson and their fellow
researchers still have a lot of data to
analyze to determine if the oil affected
the hypoxic zone they’ve been studying
for years however their study can’t
answer questions about the rest of the
Gulf we were fortunate to have this five
years of baseline data it’s too bad they
didn’t have the five years of baseline
data where a lot of the oil when if
you’re going to have all this
exploration for oil in the Gulf we
should have a monitoring program in
place Roman thinks it’s unlikely there
is a very serious dead zone in another
part of the Gulf due to the BP spill
because he feels scientists would have
found it by now he does have concerns
about the effect of the oil spill on the
food web the thing that I worry about is
the little things that eat the bacteria
that he get beaten by bigger things get
eaten by bigger things some of those oil
compounds will be around the food web
for a while and may affect the
reproduction behavior and those are the
things that should be studied
Mexico began in April
naturally-occurring microbes began their
work gobbling up some of the oil when
the microbes died oxygen in the water is
used up as they decompose scientists
have been concerned that if this
occurred in mass quantities as a serious
consequence of the oil spill it could
create hypoxic or dead zones of low
oxygen in the water well what happens
when you have no oxygen on the bottom
first of all it kills all the critters
that can’t swim away the worms and crabs
in the sediment but it makes this
habitat unavailable it’s like a false
bottom and so they can’t swim down to
the bottom to avoid predators they can’t
get in the cooler water so they’re up in
the surface waters where it’s lighter so
they’re more susceptible to predators
but it’s also warmer so their
metabolisms is higher and they require
more foods Mike Roman and his colleagues
at the University of Maryland’s horn
point laboratory study the dead zone in
the Gulf of Mexico that has occurred
every summer for over 20 years and
extends along the coast from the mouth
of the Mississippi River to Texas this
dead zone is caused by fertilizers and
other chemicals being washed into the
river they have data going back to their
first study in 2003 this year they
looked for any changes due to the spill
we measured these plants and plankton
and fish and the distributions looked
about the same as they would have in
these other years there there was low
oxygen water in the bottom they avoided
it the area wasn’t particularly large
compared to what was predicted we had
sensors that that would detected oil we
didn’t see any oil Roman and his
colleagues use an array of sensitive
devices to measure oxygen levels
salinity temperature and population
density of flora and fauna many of the
measurements come from a device called a
scan fish towed behind a vessel one
device the scientists added to the scan
fish can count ZOA plankton a key
indicator of sea health as is eel
plankton acala just I’m biased but I
also feel like it’s a integral part of
the food web it’s directly between the
primary producers like the algae that
use the Sun for energy and the fish
which are commercially and ecologically
important for various reasons so this
Oh plankton sort of mediate the flow of
energy and the flow of materials from
the primary producers up to the larger
animals peterson says early data doesn’t
indicate any dramatic change due to the
oil at a first glance you know it was a
lot of happy healthy copepods out there
roman pearson and their fellow
researchers still have a lot of data to
analyze to determine if the oil affected
the hypoxic zone they’ve been studying
for years however their study can’t
answer questions about the rest of the
Gulf we were fortunate to have this five
years of baseline data it’s too bad they
didn’t have the five years of baseline
data where a lot of the oil when if
you’re going to have all this
exploration for oil in the Gulf we
should have a monitoring program in
place Roman thinks it’s unlikely there
is a very serious dead zone in another
part of the Gulf due to the BP spill
because he feels scientists would have
found it by now he does have concerns
about the effect of the oil spill on the
food web the thing that I worry about is
the little things that eat the bacteria
that he get beaten by bigger things get
eaten by bigger things some of those oil
compounds will be around the food web
for a while and may affect the
reproduction behavior and those are the
things that should be studied
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