Defenders of Wildlife Blog

An oiled pelican on the Gulf Coast (©Krista Schyler/Defenders of Wildlife)

Laurie Macdonald, Florida Program Director

This Saturday, April 20th, will mark the third anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. By Earth Day 2010, we had learned the terrible news that 11 men had died in an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig and we hoped an environmental crisis was not going to follow.

But follow it did. Over 200 million gallons of oil spewed from a failed drilling operation nearly a mile below the ocean surface: hot, highly pressurized petroleum hydrocarbons that had been stewing for millions of years. In the days that turned into months of frantic work to seal the well, the oil and attempts to contain it caused direct and long term damage to wildlife and their habitat, including an unknown number of deaths.

How can there be restitution for such an assault on the precious and extensive resources of the Gulf? How can the environmental losses be restored and the related economic losses be compensated? Sea turtles, whales and dolphins surfacing to breathe and sea birds resting or diving into the ocean were covered with oil. Seahorses and juvenile sea turtles living in the floating sargassum seaweed mats were killed when the mats were showered with dispersants and burned. Below the surface, deep sea coral colonies and shallow seagrass beds died due to the toxic combination of dispersants and oil. And on the beach, shorebird nests and chicks were trampled and scraped away by uninformed workers during cleanup operations, while heavy equipment and lights disturbed and harmed wildlife. Every part of the Gulf was affected by the spill, from its shores to the sea floor. People dependent upon marine resources, from shrimpers to hotel and restaurant owners, lost significant livelihood, and some of those living along the affected areas suffer ongoing illnesses.

Oil floats in the water off the coast of Louisiana. (©Krista Schyler/Defenders of Wildlife)

A complex combination of legislation and lawsuits is causing the responsible parties, British Petroleum (BP) and others, to pay significant costs and fines. Penalties under the RESTORE Act passed by Congress on June 29, 2012 will make $4 billion available for restoration and improvement of the Gulf and for the people that suffered losses due to the spill. The RESTORE Act ensures that 80 percent of Deepwater Horizon civil and administrative penalties under the Clean Water Act will go to Gulf Coast restoration, and sets up a framework that can ensure coordination between the Gulf States and the Federal government.

Defenders’ Florida Representative Elizabeth Fleming and I recently attended a public meeting of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, which is evaluating which projects are most important to fund. The meeting was held to listen to information from the public about what actions we believed would be of the greatest benefit to the Gulf.

On behalf of Defenders, I presented a report that we produced with the National Wildlife Refuge Association that describes tracts of conservation land along the Gulf Coast and connections inland that should be acquired and added to the refuge system. This will protect wildlife habitat and help wildlife adapt to the impacts we are experiencing as a result of climate change and sea level rise. Examples include expanding the Gulf Islands National Seashore to protect sea turtle nesting beaches as well as people’s access to the coastline, and adding to the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge to complete the ocean-to-inland connection that wildlife will need to rely on as they adapt to climate change.

Shorebirds like this rely on the beaches affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill (©Krista Schyler/Defenders of Wildlife)

I pointed out three principles that I think should guide the decisions on how to spend the restoration funds. First, all projects, including those not focused on the environment (boat ramps and the like) must result in ecosystem benefits. Second, all projects should also take climate change and sea level rise into consideration. And lastly, the most important action we can take is to acquire valuable conservation areas that add to our system of natural resource lands and wildlife habitat.

Author Carl Safina in his book “A Sea in Flames,” closes with an observation on northern gannets — large, shining white seabirds that migrate from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico for the winter. Gannets dive for their prey and so they are directly affected by oil adhering to their bodies and by eating contaminated fish. Safina remarks that the first oiled bird whose image was in the news during the Gulf oil disaster was a gannet, and that seabird biologists speculated that up to a third of the population would be affected. The gannet already faces a host of threats near its breeding grounds, and is now suffering the impacts of the oil spill even 2,000 miles away, where it spends the off-season.

It is clear that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill will continue to affect wildlife and habitat for years to come. Our job now is to help our damaged Gulf regain its health with carefully planned, enduring restoration work.

Two years later, the Gulf of Mexico is still reeling from BP's oil disaster.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before.” One hears this phrase far too often along the brilliant white beaches, dark bayous, and hidden back bays of the northern Gulf of Mexico. Despite falling off the precipice of media attention, people in the Gulf have not forgotten what happened here in spring of 2010. Even if they tried, nature would keep sending them—and the rest of us—constant reminders.

Two years ago today, BP’s Deepwater Horizon well exploded, unleashing more than 200 million gallons of toxic crude oil into the Gulf. Combined with nearly 2 million gallons of chemical dispersant and 500,000 more tons of gaseous hydrocarbons, a mind-bending volume of pollutants were ultimately dumped into Gulf waters. By far the largest spill in U.S. history, the cumulative size of the surface slick alone was large enough to cover the entire state of Oklahoma.

So, what do we now know about the spill’s environmental impacts? It’s still too early to understand most of the damages (some caused by Alaska’s Exxon Valdez oil spill took a decade or more to detect), but what we already know is unsettling enough. Let’s begin with seafood, a major industry and economic driver in the Gulf. In 2008, the seafood industry drove a robust $5.5 billion economic engine for the region. Yet despite reopening the once-closed fishing zones, and disclaimers after the spill that Gulf seafood is safe, a scientific study found that Food and Drug Administration guidelines allowed up to 10,000 times too much contamination, and did not properly identify the true risks of the Gulf’s contaminated seafood to children and pregnant women.

Oiled pelicans were the most striking, but certainly not the only, wildlife to be impacted by the disaster.

If that were not enough, Gulf fishermen report shrimp without eyes, fish covered in open sores, clawless crabs, and other mutated and underdeveloped catch. Crabbers are harvesting 75 percent fewer crabs than in years before the spill, and the crabs they do catch are often dead, discolored, and riddled with holes or missing sections of their shells. In some places, shrimp and oyster harvests remain low, exacerbating the economic deprivation caused by the spill to Gulf residents.

And yet the impacts of the spill go even deeper into the Gulf ecosystem. Hydrocarbons from the Deepwater Horizon spill were first trapped in the ocean food chain through some of its tiniest members: zooplankton. Contaminated zooplankton were actually chemically fingerprinted with certainty back to origins from the Deepwater Horizon blowout. And since zooplankton serve as food for baby fish and shrimp, they help move oil contamination and pollutants up the food chain.

Do we yet know the full scope of harm from this oil spill? Hardly. Links between dolphin deaths and the spill are still being investigated. Since early 2010, an unusually high number of marine mammals — 580, mostly dolphins — stranded and died off the coast of Louisiana to Florida. The total number of marine birds killed by the Deepwater Horizon spill is yet to be tallied. Is there hope for recovery in the Gulf of Mexico? Sure. Did we learn our lessons? Apparently not. Despite the intentions to do better in the future after this unprecedented spill, the Oil Spill Commission gave only a summary grade of “B” to the administration, a “C+” to the oil industry, and a paltry “D” to Congress. If the continuing harm from this tragedy doesn’t teach us that the risks of drilling are simply too high, will we ever learn?

 Learn more:

See how Defenders is working to protect wildlife and natural habitats from the dangers of offshore drilling.

Watch an interview with Chris following his first trip to the Gulf post-Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

BREAKING: Ignoring the lessons of the BP Gulf oil disaster, the Obama administration plans to go forward with the sale of over 18 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling. 

ATLANTA, GA— The federal government ignored the impact of BP’s 200 million gallon oil spill in its assessment of risks and precautions for the Gulf of Mexico before the first new lease sale since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, according to a lawsuit filed today in D.C. federal court by conservation groups. In deciding to proceed with Lease Sale 218 on December 14, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management dismissed the lessons learned during the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster from its assessment of oil spill risk for the Gulf of Mexico, the possible size of an oil spill, and resulting damage – all considerations that could help prevent or mitigate a future spill.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed the complaint today on behalf of Oceana, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the BOEM’s decision to accept bids from oil and gas companies for new deep and shallow water leases in the Gulf of Mexico as part of Lease Sale 218.

Defenders attorney Sierra Weaver said, “Failing to fully analyze the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and the potential of future spills before moving forward with drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is asking for another drilling catastrophe. If the government isn’t going to act in the interests of the region’s wildlife, natural habitats and coastal communities, we will.”

READ THE FULL RELEASE:  See what other groups are saying about the Obama administration’s decision to continue to allow shallow and deepwater drilling in the Gulf. 

A year and a half since BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 people and initiating the worst environmental disaster the country has ever seen, the oil company is headed back into the Gulf of Mexico. That’s right. On Wednesday, the federal government gave BP approval to launch its first deep-water drilling since the disaster.

According to the Houston Chronicle, under the permit issued by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the British oil giant has permission to begin drilling at its Kaskida field about 192 miles off the Louisiana coast. And not only do operations have the green light to begin immediately, but BP plans to drill the newly approved well in 6,034 feet of water – about 1,000 feet deeper than the Macondo well.

That wasn’t the oil giant’s only good news for the week. CNN Money said that on Monday, BP reported ”better-than-expected earnings” for this quarter, with profits nearly doubling from the same quarter last year, from $1.8 billion to $4.9 billion. The company’s net revenue increased by about 31% to $97.6 billion.

Recovery hasn’t come as easily to the Gulf, whose diverse wildlife and fragile habitats continue to feel the impacts of the toxic oil and chemical dispersants. Just today, researchers announced a potential tie between the BP oil disaster and the continued surge of dolphin deaths in the Gulf. A cluster of bacterial infections may be an indication of exposure to oil by the marine mammals, who have been dying in numbers far higher than normal.  The St. Petersburg Times reports that from March 2010 to last week, 580 bottlenose dolphins and sperm whales have died and washed ashore in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. The total for last year was 265.

That investigation is continuing, but one thing we do know for sure: as long as we continue to hand over our country’s treasured coasts and fragile waters to Big Oil, we can continue to expect tragedies like the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Because if 205 million gallons of oil spewing into Gulf waters isn’t enough to teach us better than that, what is?

Learn more:

See how dangerous offshore drilling threatens wildlife and natural habitats.

Endangered loggerhead turtle. Photo credit: Brian J. Skerry/National Geographic Stock

WASHINGTON (October 13, 2011) – Conservation groups today asked a federal court in Washington, D.C., to hold the National Marine Fisheries Service accountable for its role in the shrimp trawl-related deaths of endangered sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2011 alone, an extraordinary number of sea turtles – more than 1,400 — have washed ashore dead or injured in the Gulf of Mexico and southeast Atlantic Ocean. The Fisheries Service has linked these “strandings” to drowning in shrimp fishing nets. Despite this rise in sea turtle strandings and the devastating impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, the Fisheries Service has not fulfilled its duty to protect these imperiled animals from harm.

“Sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico are still reeling from the impacts of last year’s oil spill, and they simply can’t withstand the chronic threat of drowning in shrimp nets,” said Jaclyn Lopez, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The government’s own data show that record numbers of sea turtles have perished in the Gulf of Mexico this year, yet the Fisheries Service has not taken protective measures to prevent sea turtles from dying in the shrimp-trawl fishery.”

Shrimp trawling has for many decades been the primary threat to sea turtle survival in the U.S., and turtles in the Gulf of Mexico may be more vulnerable now to drowning in shrimp nets as a result of the BP spill and cleanup efforts. The shrimp trawl fishery incidentally captures and kills thousands of threatened and endangered sea turtles each year. “Turtle excluder devices” can help prevent turtles from drowning in the nets, but not all shrimpers are required to use them and still others simply don’t comply with existing regulations.

“The Fisheries Service has admitted that increased turtle protections in the shrimp fishery are needed,” said Sierra Weaver, attorney for Defenders of Wildlife. “It’s time to translate that need for action into real protections for these animals.”

“The Fisheries Service is allowing this fishery to continue without requiring protections it knows can save turtles,” said Chris Pincetich of the Turtle Island Restoration Network. “Turtle excluder devices should be required now for all shrimpers.”

The Fisheries Service admitted in August 2010 that it needed to reassess the impact of the shrimp fishery on sea turtles in light of the dramatic increase in strandings, but it still has not finished that analysis. Then, following 379 sea turtle strandings – by government estimates only 5 to 6 percent of actual mortality – along the coasts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in early 2011, the Fisheries Service temporarily improved enforcement and announced that it would explore new rules to reduce sea turtle mortality. Meanwhile shrimp fishing continues as usual; the Fisheries Service has denied requests from the conservation groups for emergency measures to reduce the harm to sea turtles.

Turtles in the Gulf of Mexico may be more vulnerable now to drowning in shrimp nets as a result of the BP spill and cleanup efforts. Photo Credit: NOAA.

“The Fisheries Service has admitted that increased turtle protections in the shrimp fishery are needed,” said Sierra Weaver, attorney for Defenders of Wildlife. “It’s time to translate that need for action into real protections for these animals.”

“Reducing sea turtle deaths from fisheries is key to preventing extinction,” said Marydele Donnelly, director of international policy at the Sea Turtle Conservancy. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that shrimping plus noncompliance and minimal enforcement equals a lot of dead turtles. By failing to uphold the law, the Fisheries Service is undermining decades of conservation and squandering millions of private and public dollars.”

The Endangered Species Act requires the Fisheries Service to ensure that its actions do not jeopardize the continued existence of endangered species and to respond to evidence of new threats to their survival. Today’s lawsuit challenges the agency’s failure to protect sea turtles in the wake of a huge increase in strandings and seeks to establish protections for the turtles, including increased enforcement and observer coverage to reduce turtle deaths from shrimp trawls; closure of sensitive areas to shrimp trawling; and broader requirements for shrimp boats to use turtle-excluder devices to allow turtles to escape drowning in all types of trawl gear.

Conservation groups filing today’s suit include the Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Defenders of Wildlife, and Sea Turtle Conservancy.

Learn more:

See how offshore drilling threatens sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the second in a series of three fast-track drilling bills that imposes arbitrarily rushed permitting deadlines that would force the Secretary of the Interior to approve or deny drilling permits within 30 days, and automatically approve within 60 days.

H.R. 1229, ironically called “Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work,” eliminates important safety and environmental considerations and gives experts far too little time to adequately evaluate the safety and environmental implications of drilling – exactly the type of reckless protocol that contributed to the disastrous BP Deepwater Horizon explosion.

Rodger Schlickeisen, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife said, “This bill should more accurately be called, ‘Pandering to Big Oil Interests at the Expense of Coastal Economies and the Environment.’ By fast-tracking the important review process, the bill puts at risk the very fishermen, restaurant and hotel owners, and coastal communities, wildlife and habitat still reeling from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

“Instead of lowering the bar for Big Oil, Congress should be working to safeguard those jobs and the healthy environment on which they depend.

“Instead of lowering the bar for Big Oil, Congress should be working to safeguard those jobs and the healthy environment on which they depend. Congress should pass legislation that ensures safer operations in any water depth, provides better spill response, lifts the existing liability cap and secures funding for restoration efforts in the Gulf.”

A vote on the last bill of this reckless drilling suite is expected this week. H.R. 1231 requires the administration to open up coastal and Arctic offshore drilling areas regardless of economic or environmental consequences.

Learn more:

Congress is suffering from oil disaster amnesia – read about the first reckless drilling bill to pass the House.

See how Defenders is working to protect America’s coasts from the dangers of offshore drilling.