Pensacola Beach sample showing oil below clean surface. Photo Credit: Markus Huettel

Many of the oil-fouled beaches along the Gulf coast and barrier islands have been scoured, scraped, raked and filtered clean. Tourist beaches and beaches in front of high-rise condominiums along the Florida panhandle and eastern shores of Alabama are spectacularly white again.

But dig two feet below the pristine surface and a tarry, brown surprise awaits you — you’ve struck oil.

“Oil was coming ashore and was transported down into the sand by natural hydrodynamic processes, then trapped in the sand,” said Dr. Joel Kostka an environmental microbiologist and microbial ecologist at Florida State University (FSU).

Kostka, along with principal investigator Dr. Markus Huettel, also of FSU, has been investigating how quickly oil that flowed onto Gulf beaches is being degraded (“eaten” in the common vernacular) by the microbial communities that live naturally in the sand. They’re also trying to discover if the so called “oil-eating” bacteria and microalgae that normally lived in the Gulf’s water column and got washed ashore with oil helped or hindered the process.

Crude oil and, perhaps worse, dispersed oil (crude mixed with Corexit dispersant) was washed onto the sand by wave action. Then, as more and more sand was deposited on top of the oil, a horizontal layer of oil resulted about two to three feet below the beach surface.

Dr. Joel Kostka explains microbial activity on oil. Photo Credit: Belinda Serata

So the restoration process is not just a matter of having clean, white sand beaches. Buried oil can contaminate ground water. Chemicals can infiltrate fresh water aquifers. Toxic compounds can be flushed back to the Gulf, killing fish and crustacean larvae. Lingering oil is a threat to wildlife and ecosystems because it can plug water flow that cleanses and enriches shoreline communities.

Kostka explained that crude oil is really a mix of thousands of organic (i.e., carbon-based) compounds. Over eons a variety of microbes — bacteria, microalgae and fungi — have evolved to metabolize specific compounds. Which is to say, different microbes in different places eat different parts of crude oil. Some microorganisms eat a variety of compounds but none eat all of them. Almost all stay away from asphaltenes — hydrocarbons that linger for years as asphalt-like tar.

Many oil-degrading microorganisms need oxygen and nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) to metabolize their preferred food.

Trench shows layering of oil below cleaned surface at Pensacola Beach - Photo Credit: Markus Huettel

“We can measure really high oxygen consumption rates in the sand where the oil layers are [a key indicator of microbial activity]. And we can also identify the oil-degrading microbes that are there,” Kostka said. “So from the oxygen consumption data and from the type of bacteria that we see there, there’s a thriving oil-degrading microbial community,” he added.

In June, Huettel, Kostka and a small contingent of grad students collected core samples of beach sands from around the Gulf. They braved the mosquitoes and no-see-ums on St. George Island, Fla. to collect control samples from a pristine beach. On Elmer’s Island, La., samples were collected from the opposite extreme: heavily oiled, extremely contaminated sands.

At Pensacola, Fla., the primary research site, they dug trenches and collected core samples.

What emerged was a listing of 14 microbes that metabolize specific compounds in oil. “People often think of these sands as dead. But they’re really not. They’re just covered with microbes. There are nearly as many microorganisms per gram of beach sand as there are in mud,” said Kostka.

Kostka and Huettel have hypothesized that these tiny organisms can be used as indicators of oil contamination in subsurface beach sand. So instead of sending an army of grad students out to the beaches with shovels and energy drinks to dig long, deep trenches in search of buried oil, smaller samples of beach sand could be collected and analyzed to identify microbes that are present in unusually large quantities.

Once an area of contamination has been located, the presence and activity of key microbial groups might provide an indication of what’s under there in terms of the remaining oil compounds and what needs to be done (or can be done) to clean the contamination or protect threatened wildlife.

Dr. Sylvia Earle interviewed by NWF's Bob Serata at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Prk, Key Largo, Fla. Photo: Belinda Serata/NWF

Movie and TV stars don’t do it for us. But when my wife Belinda and I met Dr. Sylvia Earle as she came ashore from a dive boat, walking the narrow deck in her wet suit, still dripping, still smiling, we both felt the power of one person’s life’s work. I think we were a bit star-struck.

Sylvia Earl, NWF Conservation Achievement Award Honoree, has been an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society since 1998, the year Time magazine named her the first “hero for the planet.” She has spent most of her professional life under water, leading more than 70 expeditions. She was nicknamed “Her Deepness” after setting the solo diving depth record of 3,300 feet. She calls the oceans the “blue heart” of all humans.

As the first female chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Sylvia was a central figure in establishing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument (aka Papahānaumokuākea), the largest single fully protected area in the United States and the world’s largest fully protected marine area — 140,000 square miles of protected ocean (larger than all of the nation’s national parks combined) that is home to more than 7,000 kinds of marine life. The monument was created by President George W. Bush via presidential proclamation in 2006.

Sylvia came up to us, hand outstretched in greeting, a 75-year-old version of the pioneering marine botanist who broke with tradition by studying marine plants in the plants’ environment, instead of breaking off pieces and carrying them back to the lab.

In town to give the keynote speech at the 50th anniversary celebration of John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo, Fla., Sylvia took some time to talk to NWF about conservation, caring and science.

Bob Serata snorkels above a young whale shark (about 12 feet long). Photo: Belinda Serata/NWF

NWF / BS [interviewer’s initials, by the way]: You were in the Gulf of Mexico in June 2010 studying whale sharks. Tell us about that.

Dr. Earle: The expedition in June 2010 was in part a response to the oil spill. What scientists were really concerned about was what the oil spill might be doing to the whale sharks because among other things they eat right at the surface. They open their big mouths and whatever’s there comes in.

We’d spent a day looking at patches of sargassum and hoping to see whale sharks but we didn’t sign of a whale shark. We did see some big mats of floating sargassum. We stopped at an oil rig and swam with some of the great collections of fish that tend to gather around the rigs.

We went to sleep that night 70 or 100 miles offshore and when we woke up in the morning, the crew of the ship we were on was yelling, “You gotta get up, whale sharks, whale sharks.” So we all tumbled out of our bunks and we were surrounded by whale sharks. An airplane that Dr. Eric Hoffmayer had engaged counted 91 whale sharks in just one frame.

We went in the water and there weren’t just whale sharks up at the surface, there were layers of whale sharks.

NWF / BS: How could the Gulf oil disaster affect whale sharks?

Dr. Earle: In a single gulp, a whale shark might get a cross section of 12 to 15 different animals. From polychaete worms to jellyfish, arrow worms, flat worms, copepods, anthropods, larvae of shrimp and crabs. And whale sharks feed at the surface where there was a lot of oil.

NWF / BS: It’s also thought that a lot of sargassum was destroyed by the oil and dispersants. Why should we care about seaweed?

Dr. Earle: Sargassum is like a rain forest. It’s a little wetter than a rain forest. But it’s a golden floating forest. It floats in the ocean, it’s like a floating island of life out there; it doesn’t stay anchored.

When you see a big mat of sargassum instead of saying “oh yuk,” say “oh fantastic,” because if you get a mass and look closely at it, you’ll see little eyes looking back. Or if you gently scoop a little bit and put it in a bucket of water or a dish pan and you just watch you’ll see little filefish, you’ll see baby sargassum fish, baby flying fish all the color of the sargassum, and little snails because that’s their only home.

Baby turtles find a home there. And with the loss of sargassum it’s a loss of habitat, it’s bad news for the baby fish that seek haven there, for young turtles for a whole suite of organisms that absolutely require this as a nursery a safe haven in the open sea.

Green Sea Turtle. Photo Credit: Philippe Guillaume

NWF / BS: The ocean seems such a huge concept, what can an individual do to help conserve it as a resource?

Dr. Earle: The best answer about solutions is exactly what you’re [NWF is] doing. You’re communicating what the issues are, encouraging people to think and to understand why it matters to us, why taking care of the ocean relates to our everyday lives. With every breath we take, every drop of water we drink we’re connected to the ocean, not everybody knows that.

Everyone can consume fewer wild animals from the sea. We’re taking far too much ocean wildlife and it has an impact. It’s hard to find a shark or to find a big grouper, so let’s just stop killing them. Or if you do, make sure that you treat it with great respect and don’t do it every day or every week or every month, just make it a special treat. A special treat for me today is seeing one alive out there. I only saw one grouper in a dive of about an hour out at Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. There should be dozens of them everywhere.

Everyone can lend their support to ocean protection. Part of it means supporting those efforts to have places like Pennekamp Park or to really expand the fully protected areas as safe havens for fish.

If you really want fish to eat in the future you’ve got to save them now. Only about 10 percent of the large species we like to consume – tunas, swordfish, marlin, sharks, grouper, snapper – are still there from where they were 50 years ago.

A fraction, less than one percent, of the ocean is protected and all the rest is open for fishing and not just casual fishing, I mean large-scale fishing that is taking the heart out of the ocean. We just need to think differently. We don’t go out and make a meal out of songbirds, we don’t find them in our supermarkets. We think nothing of seeing wild fish, wild shrimp, wild lobster, wildlife from the sea in large quantities pouring into us and out of the ocean. It doesn’t mean we should stop eating wildlife from the sea, we’ve just overdone it, it’s not sustainable.

The message is the same wherever a person lives – you’re dependent on the ocean. The ocean generates 70 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere; 97 percent of earth’s water is out there in the ocean. Yes, it’s salt water and we don’t drink salt water but where does rain come from? It comes from water that goes up in the atmosphere forming clouds and sending fresh water back to the land, restoring rivers, lakes and streams. Without the ocean, earth would be a lot like Mars.

We are all sea creatures in a way. We’re all dependent on the ocean, even if you’ve never seen the ocean or thought about the ocean, the ocean keeps you alive and the ocean needs your help at this point in history. It needs your vote. Fish don’t vote.  It needs you.

If you’re a kid if you’re grownup it doesn’t matter. You have power and part of it comes of making your voice heard. When I served as the chief scientist at NOAA, the letters that people would send really counted and it counts now on the local level and the state level and the national level, and even international. Write to the United Nations if you have an issue about the atmosphere or the high seas or about policies that affect the whole world, whatever it is. Your voice counts. It counts when you’re silent every bit as much. Lack of expressing yourself suggests that you don’t care. So inaction is a vote. Inaction is a decision just like action is a conscious decision.

I think the biggest problem today is complacency. People who just don’t do what they could do to make a difference when we really need as much help as we can get to give voice to the voiceless — all those in the future who aren’t here to express themselves or vote, and all of the wild creature who can’t vote and can’t express themselves.

Jim Franks, Senior Research Scientist, Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, Ocean Springs, Miss. Photo: Belinda Serata/NWF

Hyperbole? If you’re visualizing an entire ocean, marshland, bay or miles-long beachfront destroyed, perhaps.

But if you consider pelagic sargassum, that yellowish-brown seaweed that forms up into floating mats, clumps and weed lines (scientists call them “weedrows”), you will find entire habitats destroyed by the Gulf oil disaster.

“It’s really a dynamic, diverse, spectacular open ocean community,” said Jim Franks, senior research scientist, Gulf Coast Research Laboratory (GCRL), Ocean Springs, Miss., about sargassum.

“We’ve actually identified over 130 species of fish that utilize sargassum as habitat at one life stage or another,” he explained.

Researchers Surveying Sargassum

Though it looks like a floating carpet, sargassum grows to three feet deep. Photo: Belinda Serata/NWF

From 2000 to 2004 a team of GCRL scientists, including Dr. Eric Hoffmayer, also of GCRL, and Franks, have studied sargassum.

Team members made 14 sampling cruises in the north central Gulf of Mexico. They used large- and small-mesh nets to target juvenile fish and larvae, and collected samples by towing nets through, adjacent to and below sargassum to a depth of 50 meters.

The final tally of fish that used sargassum as habitat during the sampling cruises came to 110 species, a slight under count because 19 fish could be ranked only by family, not by genus and species.

It’s interesting to note that these surveys specifically targeted juvenile and larval fish. Other animals were collected but no crabs, shrimp or other animals that depend on sargassum were counted. A less scientific, but perhaps equally enlightening experience is to jump into the water near a sargassum mat or, as our lawyers would prefer I recommend, view the habitat from a boat.

Wildlife Using Sargassum for Habitat

You’re likely to see filefish, jacks, blue runners, flyingfish and triggerfish. A few feet deeper swim sharks, dolphin (of the mahi-mahi variety), barracuda, wahoo and mackerel. You might see loggerhead, Kemp’s Ridley, green and hawksbill sea turtle hatchlings. Hanging on to the sargassum might be sea snails.

In the sky, watch for the masked booby, red-necked phalarope and various terns and gulls. The bridled tern often rests on top of the clumps of sargassum.

Sargassum and the Oil Spill

Sargassum is habitat. And a lot of it was wiped out by oil, dispersant and burning. What no one can tell me is how much animal and plant life was destroyed either by oil, chemicals or fire.

“I saw a considerable amount of sargassum that was actually in the oil and in the dispersed oil and in the oil sheens,” said Franks. “We saw a lot of that in our offshore cruise in May. At that point we were about 80 miles south and looping around to 80 miles north of the actual spill site, so we were some distance away,” he added.

Shrimp larvae collected from sargassum mat 80 miles south of Deepwater Horizon well head. Photo: Belinda Serata/NWF

Asked how many fish, shrimp or crab larvae or juveniles were killed in oiled sargassum Franks said, “There’s no way to tell for sure. It’s something we plan to investigate,” he added.

And therein lies the rub. There are very good measurements of very small pieces of the puzzle. After that, it’s a matter of mathematical models, extrapolations and guesswork.

Sea Turtles in Need of Sargassum

Take turtles, for instance. We know that several species of hatchling sea turtles make their way to sargassum mats and live the early part of their lives within those weeds.

So how much oil hit how much sargassum? How many of each turtle species were there when the oil hit? What were the effects of the oil on sargassum and baby turtles? How many turtles were harmed or killed and how many made it through ok?

More about how the Gulf oil disaster impacted sea turtles >>

A 2008 study by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute surveyed sargassum habitats for neonate (i.e., hatchling) sea turtles. The study found 60 sea turtles per square kilometer of sargassum habitat (30 green turtles and 30 Kemp’s Ridleys) in one survey area off Pensacola, the smallest of six survey areas around Florida (four in the Gulf, two in the Atlantic).

So all you have to do is figure out how much sargassum is out there, and how much of it was hit by oil and chemical dispersants, and you can generate at least an estimate of the number of baby green and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles that were impacted by the Gulf oil disaster — maybe even stretch to say “harmed” by oil and chemicals.

That’s what the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) is trying to figure out. And it’s not just about the nature. It’s about money — fines and penalties and lawsuits. Which means the lawyers should do just fine.

But the sargassum is gone — destroyed and sunk to the Gulf floor. And with it, the habitat for baby sea turtles and a myriad of other marine newborns.

Since the Gulf oil disaster there’s evidence of health and behavior changes in the native red crab population. “They’re not defending their turf,” said Harriet Perry, director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at Gulf Coast Research Laboratory (GCRL) in Ocean Springs, Miss.

Live red crab held by Harriet Perry. Photo: Belinda Serata/NWF

Perry, a hands-on field biologist who has been studying Gulf fisheries for more than 30 years, can see something different happening.

Just 12 miles from the Deepwater Horizon well head, red crabs are being displaced by a deepwater, grey shelled giant isopod called Bathynomus giganteus.

Isopods are crustaceans, usually shrimp-sized or smaller, resembling woodlice or what kids call roly-polies. Bathynomus, a deep sea critter that’s been scavenging ocean floors for about 160 million years, is big — usually about a foot long. One specimen brought up the Gulf’s depths measured more than two feet long.

But the crustacean’s size isn’t news; the fact that red crabs are being pushed around by Bathynomus is.

In the area near the wellhead, traps that historically caught more than 30 crabs each came up with very few live crabs, most were dead. “They had enough energy to get in the trap and normally they will survive the trip from the bottom to the surface and do well,” said Perry. But the few live crabs that made it to the surface were weak and lethargic.

The face of Bathynomus giganteus. Photo: Belinda Serata/NWF

The real surprise came when traps brought up Bathynomus instead of the previously abundant red crab. “Being that close to the well and knowing how much oil and dispersant went into the water, I really anticipated no catch in that area and was surprised when we did get animals,” said Perry. “We saw no obvious signs of oil. When crabs or isopods came up in the traps they weren’t oily but they were stressed,” she added. Which is to say, most of the Bathynomus were dead on arrival or close to it. Within days all were dead.

 Deep-sea crab surveys have been few and far between. There were several studies in the Gulf of Mexico in the late 1980s and early 90s so there are some historic data on the populations. The red crab has supported a commercial fishery in New England and there are more data on that fishery because it’s managed. Because there’s no current commercial fishery of red crabs in the Gulf, and there won’t be one any time soon (hauling traps up from 3,000-6,000 foot depths isn’t very profitable), there’s only the existing science that can be used to assess the impacts of oil on this deepwater community.

So in keeping with the federal government’s 50-year-long “Let’s just put 4,000 oil and gas wells into the Gulf of Mexico; what could go wrong?” program, there’s no immediate funding to support new trapping sets. “We don’t know where the crabs went, or why,” said Perry.

Scientists don’t know if red crabs were displaced by Bathynomus because something weakened them physically or they responded to some adverse environmental change, like low oxygen or oil in the water. We also don’t know if they have moved down the slope, though they’re limited to a narrow band on the steep slope where the temperature stays around 41° F.

What’s most worrisome is that the unexpected displacement of red crabs by Bathynomus may be an indication of other post-oil-spill surprises to come.

Perry has collected red crab tissue samples —fat glands, gonads, gills and muscle tissue — to send to several labs for analysis.

“They’re totally tied to the bottom and we know from a previous study that they accumulate heavy metals in their tissues,” said Perry. “That’s one reason we are interested in looking at the heavy metal content of their tissues following the spill,” she added.

Also, the labs will analyze for compounds that make up Corexit, the dispersant BP sprayed on the water surface and, later, poured directly into the oil spewing from the well head on the sea floor and for petroleum compounds.

“There’s something going on down there and we need to understand it,” said Perry.

To see what a red crab & a giant isopod look like side by side, visit NWF on Flickr. To learn more about the National Wildlife Federation’s Gulf oil disaster response, visit NWF.org/OilSpill.

NWF photographer Belinda Serata and I journeyed across Mississippi Sound aboard long-time Ocean Springs resident Bob Smith’s 21-foot Sea Pro to see what was going on. 

On a typical pre-oil-spill day, you might see a few small fishing boats like Smith’s drifting around the island in search of speckled trout, redfish (red drum), Spanish mackerel and flounder. On the horizon you’d make out the shape of shrimpers with their trawls out. Turning to the southeast, you’d see the massive storage tanks at the Chevron refinery in Pascagoula. 

For some 50 years, Bob Smith has been camping, fishing and enjoying the Gulf Islands National Seashore, in particular East and West Ship Island (Ship Island was split in two by category 5 Hurricane Camille in 1969) and Horn Island. He’s pretty much seen it all – from alligator tracks in the sand to scores of brown pelicans bobbing in the shallows to island pine trees stripped of needles by storm winds. 

But nothing like this. There’s an industrial-strength landing site at the west end of Horn. Large crew boats, tugs and barges are anchored in the shallows next to channels between the islands that provide deep water access. Cranes rise above bulldozers and portable equipment pods. Tractor-pulled crew carriers roll along the beaches looking Disney-esque. Expensive-looking ATVs zip back and forth along the beach. 

One crew appears to be getting briefed for the day’s work. It’s 10:30 a.m. and the workers are huddled up behind one of the crew carriers. I don’t see a shovel or rake in anyone’s hands. The bulldozers don’t belch smoke and the cranes sit idle. I’m not an oil spill clean-up expert so all of this non-action could be part of the plan – the same government-approved oil company plan that called for protection of the area’s walruses, seals and sea lions. 

To their credit, though, the cleanup crews have put the island back in a lot better shape than it was in June, when oil washed up and over its beaches. From a distance, and except for a few very small areas, the sand looks clean. 

We circle the island, see another landing site at the eastern tip, watch a large crew tirelessly stand around (waiting for orders, maybe?), then anchor on the north (Mississippi Sound) side over bare sand in knee-deep water and wade ashore. 

Within minutes I find an elongated egg-shaped black tar ball but Smith tells me he’s seen these on Horn’s beaches his whole life. The tar reminds me of my pre-teen days on the beach in Atlantic City where my mom, and moms for miles in either direction, used nail polish remover to get tar off our feet (gasoline worked better but we weren’t allowed to bring cans of gas to the beach). 

Crossing to the south (Gulf) side of the island, we strike oil, though it’s not the visual horror you might have expected. 

To the east and west we see tiny brownish-red, shiny pebbles of oil. “Tar ball” doesn’t seem an apt description; maybe “tar marble” is more accurate. 

I pick up a pebble-sized tar marble and squeeze it. Feels like sculpting clay. There are about a gazillion (estimated, of course) of these marbles on the beach.

Throughout August and September, Biloxi and Pascagoula media reported on crews cleaning Horn Island’s beaches, picking up pieces of tar with long-handled sifters and removing bucketfuls of black tar pads.

But there wasn’t any video showing the marbles (admittedly, they are really hard to photograph). Did they arrive after the TV crews left and after the heavier black tar balls were removed? Are they “dispersed oil,” the result of spraying Corexit 9500 dispersant on the leaked crude (these marbles are too big to be called “droplets”)? 

More to the point: how do you pick up a gazillion marbles made of oil? BP and state officials have been quoted as saying there’s a lot more cleanup to be done. Looks that way to me, too.

On the final day of the two-day Gulf Oil Spill Symposium at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., co-sponsored by Mote, NWF and the University of South Florida (USF), three work groups of about a dozen scientists each came to the same conclusion: what we don’t know about the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem could fill volumes.

Meeting separately and without inter-group communication, the work groups were tasked with developing research initiatives meant to guide policy- and decision-makers through the labyrinth of Gulf of Mexico wildlife and habitat restoration.

Dr. Michael Crosby, John Hammond and Dr. William Hogarth ( ©2010 Belinda Serata | National Wildlife Federation® )

When the groups reunited to share their results, a consistent theme emerged: we need to gather, integrate and synthesize existing data, which is held by dozens, or more likely hundreds, of scientists, universities, science centers, research organizations, independent labs, environmental groups, government agencies and businesses. Not to mention all of the accumulated knowledge held by people who have been fishing, diving and boating in and around the Gulf for years.

Drawing upon this cumulative knowledge, conceptual models would be built to describe how scientists think the Gulf ecosystem works. These models, or as Dr. Jerry Ault called them “wire diagrams,” would form the framework for designing specific research projects and programs. Ault, of the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and others agreed the models would show the varied, complex and changing relationships between species, location and time (i.e., life cycle). A flexible (“adaptive”) management approach would be built in, so that newly gathered data and study results could be integrated into the models, allowing for research targets to be continually refined to reflect new updates and analysis.

The foundational concept underlying the work is the trophic cascade, or the nutritional relationship between predators, prey and plants. A trophic cascade provides a framework for what NWF’s Dr. Bruce Stein called an “early warning system” – sets of data triggers that signal problems, before they become disasters.

For example, consider the lowly menhaden. It’s a fish, typically less than a foot in length and less than a pound in weight that humans (except for fishermen) avoid like the plague. They’re bony, smelly and taste like last week’s catch left in the sun.

But they feed a long list of deepwater, near shore and inshore fish, including tuna, marlin, sharks, mackerel, tarpon, snook and spotted seatrout to name a few. Also, they’re caught commercially in huge numbers to become frozen bait, fertilizer and other products.

The predators sit above menhaden on the trophic scale. Below menhaden are phytoplankton, microscopic marine plants. Menhanden are filter-feeders that scoop up plankton, going through life with their mouths open.

So, continuing this simple example, a model can be built showing the trophic relationship between snook, menhaden and phytoplankton in a specific place over a specific period of time.

Over the next year, the menhaden population might show an increase. But would that increase result from successful breeding, low snook counts (snook populations were devastated by Florida’s 2010 winter cold snaps), closed fisheries after the BP oil well dumped more than 200 million gallons of oil and methane into the Gulf – or even a combination of factors? It’s an important question because fisheries managers at the state and local levels have to decide how large (in pounds) the annual menhaden catch may be.

The answer is equally important because the fisheries decision affects people’s livelihoods as well as the long-term health of menhaden, snook and phytoplankton, plus those other species that are linked by the food web to menhaden, snook and phytoplankton in the Gulf. Which is to say, multiply this simple example by a few thousand additions, complications and permutations and you’ve got a picture of life in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hence the need to gather and synthesize existing data, build models and start testing those models “now,” “quickly,” “today,” as the symposium’s visiting scientists and resource managers said (not all of the participants were academics; some dealt with tough resource management decisions).

“Here’s where we go from here,” explained Dr. Michael Crosby, vice president of Research at Mote Marine Laboratory. “We’ve got recommendations that have come out and we’re going to prepare a report to be ready by January [2011]…We hope to make the linkages with officials at the state and federal levels to use these recommendations to influence future programs and legislation, at no cost to the taxpayer,” he said.

The recommendations call for using BP money to restore what the BP oil blowout destroyed. The reason there’s pressure to get moving is because BP is already pushing back. Their corporate lawyers, staff and hired scientists are trying to reduce the amount of money BP might be fined.

It’s the job of the NWFs of the world, and most importantly our members and supporters, to keep up the pressure on decision- and policy-makers.

Meanwhile, it’s up to scientists around the Gulf and beyond to ferret out signs of damage from the spill and inform resource managers.

“As soon as it’s [the report] done, I want to get it into the hands of our congressional representatives and legislative committee members,” said Dr. William Hogarth, dean of the College of Marine Sciences at USF. “It’s also important that the five states that border the Gulf are involved because when we work together we can get a lot more done,” he added.

John Hammond, regional executive director of NWF, agrees but is thinking even broader. The gulf oil disaster has national repercussions and will continue to impact the nation for years to come so Hammond thinks there can be “a kind of national consensus,” as he put it, regarding BP penalties and how those monies are used. “With the members we have, we can make sure the rigorous science that’s needed to save the Gulf gets done,” he added.

A new Congress gets seated in January. The penalty phase of the BP oil disaster – not corporate promises but actual fines codified by law – is ramping up. Tick tock.

One glaring fact jumped out at me after listening to 40 scientists discuss ways to assess the health of the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil disaster: this body of water, under which lie some 4,000 oil and gas wells, is woefully under-studied.

During the afternoon work group sessions on Nov. 9 at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., scientists began to create a framework for what Dr. Bruce Stein of NWF called “an early warning system.” Using trophic cascades as a foundation, the system would provide information to alert commercial and recreational fisherman and fisheries management agencies to impending problems with one or a group of fisheries.

NWF's Dr. Bruce Stein

These sessions took place during a two-day symposium, co-sponsored by National Wildlife Federation, Mote, and the University of South Florida.

Trophic cascades describe changes in a food chain. For example, a little fish feeds on plankton. A big fish eats the little fish. Suppose the abundance of the big fish is severely depleted, maybe by over fishing or a sudden change in its environment (a lengthy cold spell, for instance). The population of little fish would increase and the amount of plankton in waters frequented by the little fish would decline.

But before scientists can find the answers, they have to find the questions:

• They need to know what’s become of the oil and what the oil has become.

• They need to know the size, structure and location of key species at various times in their life cycles.

• They need to know the responses of these species to biological, chemical and environmental changes.

• They need to know the toxicity of oil and its residual compounds, and of dispersed oil, on a large variety of species.

• They need to know if any of these compounds accumulate in any of the wildlife. They need to know how the oil and chemicals impact wildlife reproduction.

• They need to know the thresholds that once crossed alert us to danger ahead – the loss or severe depletion of a fishery.

Mostly, they have to count everything and look for changes. Piece of cake.

Except that for an ecosystem as large and important as the Gulf of Mexico, the existing counts are surprisingly insufficient. There are a few good ones, of course, that offer reasonably reliable baselines from which to measure change. But there’s no ecosystem-wide synthesis of the data into models that might help scientists predict impacts from the Gulf oil disaster, or any oil spill, gas leak, broken pipe, barge accident or hurricane. And there are gaping holes in the data (as in, non-existent).

Worse, there’s not a lot of field-collected data because a major piece of equipment has been disappearing from the scene: a boat. Research vessels cost a lot of money to buy, outfit and maintain – money that has also been disappearing from the scene for the last 10 or so years.

Work group session at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota

So it’s okay to stick 4,000 oil and gas wells into the Gulf of Mexico—granted the oil companies employ a lot of people and no one really wants the price of gasoline, jet fuel or heating oil to quadruple—with no clue as to what’s going to happen to the place and its inhabitants when an oil flow misses the tank and ends up in the water.

It’s often a challenge for science to point its metaphorical finger at causation, in this case to say “this was caused by the oil spill” – but it can be done. This group plans on having its recommendations for a new research initiative in the hands of our new Congress on opening day, January 2011.

BP is potentially on the hook for billions of dollars in fines and penalties. But time is actually on their side. The more time passes, the more difficult it will be for science to assign causation to this BP spill. And that’s just fine with BP.

Stay tuned for further updates from the Symposium.

At Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., some 40 scientists from across the U.S. are participating in a symposium and break-out work groups to examine impacts to food webs from the BP oil spill. The two-day event is co-sponsored by NWF, Mote and the University of South Florida.

John Hammond, regional executive director for NWF, interviewed by News Channel 9 in Florida

Called trophic cascades, these relationships alter natural balances between predators and prey, feeders and food sources, even entire ecosystems. In simplest terms, you can think of the lion-gazelle-grassland analogy. Reduce the lion population and you end up with a lot of gazelles, which in turn reduce the grasslands. Alter any one of the three and the other two are affected.

While this is a gross over-simplification, it gives you an idea of the potential impacts dumping 200 million gallons of oil and another 2 million gallons of chemical dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico can have on sharks, billfish, tuna, small bait fish, corals, shrimp, oysters and a long list of pelagic, benthic and coastal species.

“The impacts to the ecosystem impact us as a society as well,” said Dr. Michael Crosby, senior vice president for research at Mote Marine Laboratory. “What we’re trying to do is identify big-picture dominoes falling within this large ecosystem called the Gulf of Mexico.”

“It’s really important for National Wildlife Federation to be mindful that the spill itself is still unfolding,” said John Hammond, regional executive director for NWF. “This symposium is very important for us because we don’t believe the oil spill is over. We do believe that there are some very specific scientific studies that need to be done to show us where the impact is and where the appropriate interventions ought to be, to understand how policy makers ought to respond, how judiciary bodies might react regarding penalties and how individual cases will be settled.”

It’s not crass to say that a lot of money will be moving around Gulf of Mexico stakeholders – from fishermen, to tourism interests, to state and local governments and to individuals. It would be nice to think that the decisions are not capricious but based on good science. And good science takes money.

“There’s money coming from a lot of different directions, so meetings like this are extremely important over the long term as you try get some direction to the way you’re going over the next nine, ten years,” said Dr. William Hogarth, dean of the College of Marine Sciences, University of South Florida.

The Florida Keys did not suffer a direct hit from the 206 million gallons of Louisiana sweet crude that poured from BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico. But the people who live along this 110-mile-long chain of islands experienced many of the feelings as their neighbors along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida Panhandle.

“People were calling and asking how much oil we had, not did we have any oil,” said Deb Gillis, who owns three Islamorada motels. “Business just dropped. I’m sure the overall economy had something to do with the general drop in bookings but people really thought we got hit by the spill,” she added.

Tourism, the primary economic driver in the Florida Keys, took a brief hit.

Then Florida’s state and local tourism marketing machines kicked into high gear. Tourism trickled back. Many business owners in the Keys tried to forget their close call with economic disaster.

Nearly six months after the spill, the communications director of a major Keys attraction, who asked to remain anonymous, responded to an interview request writing, “The intense media focus on the Keys and the oil spill has finally died down. We honestly don’t think there’s anything positive about keeping the Keys-oil connection out there in public consciousness at this time. We’re concerned that additional stories might reinforce or rejuvenate the perception that the islands are in eminent [sic] peril from the Deepwater Horizon.”

Others in the community try to remember.

Father John Peloso

“Every Sunday we mention anybody who was affected,” said Father John Peloso, pastor of San Pedro Catholic Church in the Keys. “Every Sunday we still pray for people in the Gulf, people in the Panhandle. We don’t just pray for the people, which always comes first of course, we pray for the actual environment,” he added.

Trae Kerdyk, a senior at the Palmer Trinity School in Palmetto Bay, Florida when the spill happened said, “The fact that we go on living our lives the way we did before the spill shows that we have not learned our lesson.”

Now a college freshman Kerdyk added, “The Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have left a sour taste in many people’s mouths, but few have done anything proactive to ensure that there will not be another spill off of our coasts. It has been said many times, but the importance of breaking our addiction to oil cannot be stressed enough.”

Father Peloso, a Florida native spent some years as a professional hard hat diver before entering the priesthood. He camps in the Everglades, dives the Florida reefs, fishes in both salt and fresh water.

“When it hit, I was in a little bit of shock. I said ‘man I’ve been thinking about this since I was a kid growing up in the Everglades.’ The state of Florida is my backyard. I was angry. It was like how dare these people ruin my Florida,” he said.

Peloso concluded, “Philosophically, humanity and the earth live together like a marriage. And in a marriage you have to love and respect one another. That’s how closely and intimately humanity itself depends on the earth. And unless everybody starts being more aware of how to treat nature with love and respect these things are going to happen.”

Staghorn coral (center) on healthy patch reef

A  shallow-water oil spill, even one that doesn’t reach the magnitude of the Gulf oil disaster, could kill miles of coral reefs. And it won’t be the oil alone that does it.

At the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, doctoral candidate Rachel Silverstein conducted a pilot study of the effects of high doses of oil and dispersant on staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) and star corals (Montastraea cavernosa), two inhabitants of the Florida Keys and a wide range of tropical reef systems.

Since 2006 staghorn coral has been classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) lists staghorn coral as critically endangered.

Star coral is a reef builder that is abundant throughout the Caribbean and tropical Atlantic, and can be found at the Flower Garden Banks in the Western Gulf of Mexico.

Silverstein created four treatments: 1) a 2% concentration of oil in sea water, likey much higher than would normally occur at a spill site (except, perhaps, close to a spill’s “ground zero”), 2) seawater with 2% Corexit 9500, the dispersant used during the BP oil spill, 3) a mixture of both dispersant and oil —2% oil in sea water, the dispersant added in a in a 1:10 ratio, per the manufacturer’s recommendation, and finally 4) a control treatment of just sea water with no oil or dispersant.

She used a Pulse Amplitude Modulation fluorometer to measure how well the symbiotic algae that live inside the corals photosynthesize after exposure to the three treatments.

But when the corals were treated for 12 hours with mixtures including dispersant or oil plus dispersant, there was no coral to measure.

“Basically, I found that with the oil alone there was no effect,” said Silverstein. “But, with the dispersant, and the oil plus dispersant in a 12-hour exposure, the tissue mostly just dissolved.”

Detergents, the primary ingredients in oil dispersants, are thought to eliminate the outer mucus layer that coral polyps secrete to protect against bacterial infection and to hold and transport nutrients.

Corals regularly and naturally slough off and replace this mucus layer. When it’s gone, the corals are susceptible to a host of damaging entities — from naturally-occurring bacteria to the toxic chemicals used to break up and sink floating oil sludge.

When dispersants are used the resulting oil-and-dispersant soup (i.e., dispersed oil) mixes into the water column. It doesn’t just float on the surface, which would be relatively harmless from a coral’s viewpoint.

In shallow water, from about 20 feet to 60 feet deep, where coral reefs abound, dispersed oil can cause a coral catastrophe. In deep water, like the site of the Gulf oil disaster, where dispersant was used in massive, never before seen quantities, the potential for coral death increases as the dispersed oil drifts towards coral reefs in the Florida Keys and other warm water locations.

“Corals rely a lot on their mucus layer to protect them, and the dispersant, which is like a detergent, probably just dissolves that mucus layer away,” said Silverstein. She hypothesizes that after the mucus is gone, “all the toxins [in the dispersant] can access the coral to break down the tissue.”

Silverstein reflected on the use of dispersants saying, “They say it’s 27 times safer than dish soap, but the Corexit safety manual recommends using nitrile [oil, fuel and chemical-resistant synthetic rubber] gloves to handle it.”