Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/...241682318260912.html


Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common, with BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause.

New Orleans, LA - "The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."

Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.

Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants.

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.

Eyeless shrimp

Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.

"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP's oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: "Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets."
Eyeless shrimp, from a catch of 400 pounds of eyeless shrimp, said to be caught September 22, 2011, in Barataria Bay, Louisiana [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

"Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico]," she added, "They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don't have their usual spikes … they look like they've been burned off by chemicals."

On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded, and began the release of at least 4.9 million barrels of oil. BP then used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersants to sink the oil.

Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing.

"I've seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out," Ladner told Al Jazeera. "The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday."

While on a shrimp boat in Mobile Bay with Sidney Schwartz, the fourth-generation fisherman said that he had seen shrimp with defects on their gills, and "their shells missing around their gills and head".

"We've fished here all our lives and have never seen anything like this," he added.

Ladner has also seen crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one of their claws.

Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs "with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they've been dead for a week".

Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills.

"We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills."

Rooks, who grew up fishing with her parents, said she had never seen such things in these waters, and her seafood catch last year was "ten per cent what it normally is".

"I've never seen this," he said, a statement Al Jazeera heard from every scientist, fisherman, and seafood processor we spoke with about the seafood deformities.

Given that the Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US, this phenomenon does not bode well for the region, or the country.

BP's chemicals?

"The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber," Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor told Al Jazeera. "It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known".

The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP's disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.

Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic - able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus - and carcinogenic.

Cowan believes chemicals named polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), released from BP's submerged oil, are likely to blame for what he is finding, due to the fact that the fish with lesions he is finding are from "a wide spatial distribution that is spatially coordinated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon, both surface oil and subsurface oil. A lot of the oil that impacted Louisiana was also in subsurface plumes, and we think there is a lot of it remaining on the seafloor".

Marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia published results of her submarine dives around the source area of BP's oil disaster in the Nature Geoscience journal.

Her evidence showed massive swathes of oil covering the seafloor, including photos of oil-covered bottom dwelling sea creatures.

While showing slides at an American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington, Joye said: "This is Macondo oil on the bottom. These are dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads."

Dr Wilma Subra, a chemist and Macarthur Fellow, has conducted tests on seafood and sediment samples along the Gulf for chemicals present in BP's crude oil and toxic dispersants.

"Tests have shown significant levels of oil pollution in oysters and crabs along the Louisiana coastline," Subra told Al Jazeera. "We have also found high levels of hydrocarbons in the soil and vegetation."

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, PAHs "are a group of semi-volatile organic compounds that are present in crude oil that has spent time in the ocean and eventually reaches shore, and can be formed when oil is burned".

"The fish are being exposed to PAHs, and I was able to find several references that list the same symptoms in fish after the Exxon Valdez spill, as well as other lab experiments," explained Cowan. "There was also a paper published by some LSU scientists that PAH exposure has effects on the genome."

The University of South Florida released the results of a survey whose findings corresponded with Cowan's: a two to five per cent infection rate in the same oil impact areas, and not just with red snapper, but with more than 20 species of fish with lesions. In many locations, 20 per cent of the fish had lesions, and later sampling expeditions found areas where, alarmingly, 50 per cent of the fish had them.

"I asked a NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] sampler what percentage of fish they find with sores prior to 2010, and it's one tenth of one percent," Cowan said. "Which is what we found prior to 2010 as well. But nothing like we've seen with these secondary infections and at this high of rate since the spill."

"What we think is that it's attributable to chronic exposure to PAHs released in the process of weathering of oil on the seafloor," Cowan said. "There's no other thing we can use to explain this phenomenon. We've never seen anything like this before."

Official response

Questions raised by Al Jazeera's investigation remain largely unanswered.

Al Jazeera contacted the office of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who provided a statement that said the state continues to test its waters for oil and dispersants, and that it is testing for PAHs.

"Gulf seafood has consistently tested lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the levels of oil and dispersant contamination that would pose a risk to human health," the statement reads. "Louisiana seafood continues to go through extensive testing to ensure that seafood is safe for human consumption. More than 3,000 composite samples of seafood, sediment and water have been tested in Louisiana since the start of the spill."
Signs of the impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and scientists and fishermen point fingers towards BP's oil as being the cause [Keath Ladner]

At the federal government level, the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency - both federal agencies which have powers in the this area - insisted Al Jazeera talk with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA won't comment to the media because its involvement in collecting information for an ongoing lawsuit against BP.

BP refused Al Jazeera's request to comment on this issue for a television interview, but provided a statement that read:

"Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident."

BP claims that fish lesions are common, and that prior to the Deepwater Horizon accident there was documented evidence of lesions in the Gulf of Mexico caused by parasites and other agents.

The oil giant added:

"As part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, which is led by state and federal trustees, we are investigating the extent of injury to natural resources due to the accident.

"BP is funding multiple lines of scientific investigation to evaluate potential damage to fish, and these include: extensive seafood testing programs by the Gulf states; fish population monitoring conducted by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Auburn University and others; habitat and water quality monitoring by NOAA; and toxicity tests on regional species. The state and federal Trustees will complete an injury assessment and the need for environmental restoration will be determined."

Before and after

But evidence of ongoing contamination continues to mount.

Crustacean biologist Darryl Felder, in the Department of Biology with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is in a unique position.

Felder has been monitoring the vicinity of BP's blowout Macondo well both before and after the oil disaster began, because, as he told Al Jazeera, "the National Science Foundation was interested in these areas that are vulnerable due to all the drilling".

"So we have before and after samples to compare to," he added. "We have found seafood with lesions, missing appendages, and other abnormalities."

Felder also has samples of inshore crabs with lesions. "Right here in Grand Isle we see lesions that are eroding down through their shell. We just got these samples last Thursday and are studying them now, because we have no idea what else to link this to as far as a natural event."

According to Felder, there is an even higher incidence of shell disease with crabs in deeper waters.

"My fear is that these prior incidents of lesions might be traceable to microbes, and my questions are, did we alter microbial populations in the vicinity of the well by introducing this massive amount of petroleum and in so doing cause microbes to attack things other than oil?"

One hypothesis he has is that the waxy coatings around crab shells are being impaired by anthropogenic chemicals or microbes resulting from such chemicals.

"You create a site where a lesion can occur, and microbes attack. We see them with big black lesions, around where their appendages fall off, and all that is left is a big black ring."

Felder added that his team is continuing to document the incidents: "And from what we can tell, there is a far higher incidence we're finding after the spill."

"We are also seeing much lower diversity of crustaceans," he said. "We don't have the same number of species as we did before [the spill]."

To the forum,

On recent trip down the inter-state I-75, the "turnpike" rest areas/ Welcome centers (fuel, restaurants,ect.). Banners hang off the light poles promoting "Enjoy Fresh Gulf Seafood".
No company logos just promotional banners for the tourist.

Nothing says "welcome" to Florida, better than Mickey Mouse coupons, bags of imported citrus and banners promoting fresh Gulf of Mexico seafood.

Clean bathrooms,I gotta admit.

Take Care
Earl

Yuck!!!!

I guess if shrimp are being BORN into that oil-drenched, toxic SOUP that they don't NEED eyes - as they couldn't possibly SEE ANYTHING.

I won't TOUCH any shrimp meat unless the label EXPLICITLY states it does not come from the Gulf. This way I only have to worry about glowing-in-the-dark from eating shrimp - courtesy of Fukushima radiation...

Earl wrote:
To the forum,

On recent trip down the inter-state I-75, the "turnpike" rest areas/ Welcome centers (fuel, restaurants,ect.). Banners hang off the light poles promoting "Enjoy Fresh Gulf Seafood".
No company logos just promotional banners for the tourist.

Nothing says "welcome" to Florida, better than Mickey Mouse coupons, bags of imported citrus and banners promoting fresh Gulf of Mexico seafood.

Clean bathrooms,I gotta admit.

Take Care
Earl

Earl, the question which "inquiring minds" want answered is whether those restrooms are still clean AFTER people have eaten their Gulf shrimp...?

To the Forum,

This article is double edged MSM.

I've posted how the Florida turnpikes/welcome centers have banners promoting "Gulf Seafood".

I'll make no secret, how I feel about the commercial fishing industry. I've seen the "gill nets" decimate the fish population. I watched the clammers destroy, grass beds, which destroy the eco system from the bottom up. I've seen the mullet wash up from being gutted for fake "caviar".

Most of all, I've seen these problems corrected.

What has happen in the Gulf was preventable and covered up. The plight of these fishermen is they have to go further, the expense is higher. Read there quotes, tell me they are not being bullied. We, the people, pay the price. We payed to clean it up (sink the problem with the use of the US Air Force), and we will continue to pay, for generations. There, we have the marriage of oligarchs and government. Jeff, has a name for it, "hmmm".

To keep this from being a "tangent", I'll end with a Tom Petty quote "flood you with lawyers, you could never afford" (from the song "Joe").

That is BP's strategy.

Earl


finance.yahoo.com/news/gulf-fishermen-re...-troubles-100320631.

LAFITTE, La. (AP) -- Gloom infects the hard-working shrimp and crab docks of this gritty fishing town as the second full year of fishing since BP's catastrophic oil spill kicks into high gear.

Usually folks are upbeat and busy in May, when shrimpers get back to work in Louisiana's rich waters. This spring, though, catches are down, docks are idle and anxiety is growing that the ill effects of the massive BP oil spill may be far from over.

An Associated Press examination of catch data from last year's commercial harvest along the Gulf — the first full year of fishing since the 2010 spill — reveals merit in the fishermen's complaints. According to the analysis of figures obtained through public records requests, seafood crops hit rock bottom in the Barataria estuary, the same place where some of the thickest waves of oil washed in when a BP well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

Detailed data from "trip tickets" fishermen fill out when they unload at docks reveal steep drops in Barataria, though it's far from bleak everywhere along the Gulf Coast. Fishermen are making money that is pretty equal to before the spill, according to the 2011 data not officially released yet by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Part of the reason is that though the fishermen aren't hauling in as much, prices are up so people are paying more for seafood from the Gulf than other sources.

In Barataria, the number of shrimpers in the water has remained steady, yet the fall season was off by about 7 million pounds from an average of 18.1 million pounds between 2006 and 2009. It wasn't a pretty picture for blue crabs either in Barataria: the crab catch was off by 2.7 million pounds from an average of 9.5 million pounds between 2006 and 2009, the data showed.

Fresh water from a historically high Mississippi River could have been the culprit for some of the drop off in productivity, marine experts said. Another factor may be that some areas in the estuary were closed due to oil contamination. One such place is Bay Jimmy, where oil is still gooey and thick on the shores.

Fishermen blame the spill. In Lafitte, they said the new shrimp season was off to a slow start.

"I'm afraid that oil spill has ruined us," said Ken Lee, a shrimp dock owner. "We're hardly unloading any brown shrimp at all."

For now though, a range of government officials, scientists and seafood experts say it's much too early to make any definite link between the oil spill and one-year declines in catches. Seafood harvests, while generally predictable, are subject to fluctuations even in the best of times.

But Lee shook his head as he looked over a sheet tallying recent shrimp loads in the past few days. It was slim pickings. Moments before, an 18-wheeler pulled away from his dock with just seven vats of frozen fresh shrimp. The truck has room for more than 40, he said.

"That's pitiful!" he said. "We usually load a truck full."

While catches were off, though, prices were high. The Louisiana data shows fishermen actually made as much or more in 2011 than they had in previous years. The total values of the blue crab and oyster harvests were higher than the six-year average.

Taken as a whole, the volume of seafood harvested last year in Louisiana for shrimp, crabs and oysters showed only modest drops from averages for 2003-2009, according to the AP analysis. Catches for 2010, the year of the spill, were excluded because much of the Gulf was shut down. Meanwhile, in Texas, the oyster and crab hauls were down slightly from 2003-2009 averages, the AP analysis showed.

Drought could have been a cause there, a Texas official said. The state did not have figures on its shrimp catch. Florida's data showed no major swings in harvests of oysters, crabs and shrimp. Mississippi's shrimp haul was down about 13 percent from 2003-2009 averages and its small-scale crab harvest was down 52 percent. From the 2003-2009 average, Alabama's brown shrimp catch was off 12 percent, blue crabs were off 27 percent and oysters down by about 50 percent, the state's data showed.

Fishermen say economic conditions were tough before the BP spill due to imports, high fuel prices and hurricanes. But now they say they've reached a low point since the blown-out well spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil.

In Bon Secour, Ala., Mike Skinner, a third-generation shrimper whose entire family works in the business, said last fall was the worst season he had ever seen.

"Hopefully it was a fluke thing. We'll find out this year," he said as he piloted his trawler across Mobile Bay.

In Alabama, seafood sales are down about 10 percent to $146 million in the two years since the BP gusher, according to an Auburn University study obtained by the AP. The downturn represented nearly $16 million in lost sales and has left few fishing boats in industry hubs like the Bon Secour River.

To ease the hardships, BP has given $48.5 million to Gulf states so they can market their seafood industries on websites, TV commercials, billboards and print ads that say the catch is healthy.

BP spokesman Craig Savage said the Gulf seafood industry was strong. "The fact is, the data show that seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is safe and abundant, according to numerous government reports," he said.

Truly identifying any effect of the spill — if any — on marine stocks won't be possible from landings data for several years, said Chuck Wilson, executive director of the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program, a university-based group of agents and researchers.

Still, there's reason to be wary, said Olivia Watkins, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

"We are seeing a number of anomalies in the Gulf of Mexico," Watkins said. "We should not attempt to draw premature conclusions."

The long-term prognosis for the Gulf's health remains uncertain.

Recent studies have found higher numbers of sick fish close to where BP's well blew out and genome studies of bait fish in Barataria have identified abnormalities. Meanwhile, vast areas of the cold and dark Gulf seafloor are oiled, scientists say.

And many fishermen are convinced something's amiss.

"I think the oil can kill the shrimp eggs. That's why there was no shrimp to catch last year," said Tuna Pham, a 40 -year-old Vietnamese-American shrimper docked in Lafitte. He said the catch this year was bad again.

"We was there to work, but couldn't," said Lawrence Salvato, 49, as he stopped for lunch on a dock where he moors a shrimp skiff he runs his wife, Lisa. "Usually people are excited and they can't wait to get out there. This year, there's no real incentive."

He said he made about $10,000 in seafood sales last year compared to $75,000 in 2009. He said his family made do with a $40,000 interim payment they got from BP. Fishermen who haven't settled legally yet with BP over damages continue to survive on periodic payments from a $20 billion trust fund set up by BP.

"We're afraid," Salvato said. "A lot of people are getting out of fishing. They're afraid."

___

Associated Press writer Jay Reeves reported from Bon Secour, Ala.

Earl, sadly the BP oil-spill catastrophe in the Gulf is a perfect metaphor for 21st century capitalism.

1) Engage in RECKLESS DEVELOPMENT, and justify it as "efficiency".
2) Watch the reckless development lead to some foreseeable/preventable catastrophe.
3) WASTE huge amounts of resources "cleaning up the mess" made by these 21st century Oligarch Capitalists (i.e pirates).

What do we see here? A HUGE waste in time/energy/money just in the INITIAL (inadequate) clean-up. And now the LEGACY. The "silver lining" for the shrimp farmers is that they are able to make just as much money selling LESS shrimp.

However they are spending just as much time, effort, and FUEL in catching those shrimp as BEFORE the BP catastrophe...except now all those efforts only FEED a fraction of as many people.

We see the same picture with "efficient" Monsanto Agriculture. CRUSH any/all small farmers by under-cutting their prices (thanks to your own, huge GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES). MINDLESSLY plant the same crops in the same soil year after year (whoever heard of "crop rotation"), plaster the land with greater and greater quantities of (toxic) pesticides and chemical fertilizers - and then watch crop yields go DOWN, as this mindless brute-force agriculture becomes less and less efficient.

When we look at the self-destructive (if not suicidal) economic model which Western ideologues call "progress", and then we look at the simple-but-sustainable economic models of various indigenous populations around the world, HERE is my question:

Which of these tribes is TRULY "primitive" (and which is truly ENLIGHTENED)?

To the forum,

Living near the Gulf, makes this subject a little more personal.

When this disaster happened our news "local" paper (which comes out once a week, NOT daily), was pasted with-

One page adds, full color, "we care, we will make it right"....

Now we have the settlement terms at the centerfold. Of the weekly, advertisement rag.

No outrage was ever displayed by the "power of the pen". The same BS ad, was in the USA today. I'm sure the same "centerfold", is in place. I'd personally have to drive fifty miles to get a USA Today.

The terms are on two pages in the paper. One,"economic and property damages claims", then, "medical claims".

Remember, most of the victims, are from Vietnam and presumed "ignorant hicks".

There is much posted on this subject in the BBC. Flight charts of the US Air Force, BP's "cheaper" way of getting around regulations and many other topics.

If you'd like to view, "the marriage of Oligarchs and Government", take some time and view the present and (sadly) the future.

Thank You
Earl

www.deepwaterhorizonsettlements.com/

Earl wrote:
To the forum,

Living near the Gulf, makes this subject a little more personal.

When this disaster happened our news "local" paper (which comes out once a week, NOT daily), was pasted with-

One page adds, full color, "we care, we will make it right"....

Now we have the settlement terms at the centerfold. Of the weekly, advertisement rag.

No outrage was ever displayed by the "power of the pen". The same BS ad, was in the USA today. I'm sure the same "centerfold", is in place. I'd personally have to drive fifty miles to get a USA Today.

The terms are on two pages in the paper. One,"economic and property damages claims", then, "medical claims".

Remember, most of the victims, are from Vietnam and presumed "ignorant hicks".

There is much posted on this subject in the BBC. Flight charts of the US Air Force, BP's "cheaper" way of getting around regulations and many other topics.

If you'd like to view, "the marriage of Oligarchs and Government", take some time and view the present and (sadly) the future.

Thank You
Earl

www.deepwaterhorizonsettlements.com/


Earl we're all seeing/feeling the Boot of Fascism - if in different ways. In my province it was watching a government fork over $1+ BILLION to host the Olympics party - while LEADING Canada with the highest child poverty rate for EIGHT consecutive years.

PLENTY of money for the rich to party.
NO money for poor children.

Jeff,

I've always asked everyone, "what do you see"?

"Earl we're all seeing/feeling the Boot of Fascism - if in different ways. In my province it was watching a government fork over $1+ BILLION to host the Olympics party - while LEADING Canada with the highest child poverty rate for EIGHT consecutive years."

Thank You
Earl

I am no expert in the field of oil spill cleaning, but why did they just not set fire to the fuel that was floating on the water ? It would have all burned out right ?