Marine life may suffer long after public forgets oil spill

Tampa Bay Online: Marine life may suffer long after public forgets oil spill
TAMPA - While the public has moved on from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, scientists and fisheries managers worry it may have sparked a cascade of events that will lead to the collapse of entire Gulf species.

It happened to the herring after the Exxon Valdez oil spill 20 years ago.

But marine scientists meeting in Sarasota this week say Gulf creatures at risk could be spared if private and public agencies pool their knowledge of the effect of the oil and the state of the Gulf before the BP blowout.

"This is extremely important at this stage of the game," said William Hogarth, dean of the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida.

The government plans to collect billions from BP in fines, but scientists and fishery managers who want some of that money will have to back up their protection and restoration plans with hard data, he said.

Representatives from more than 25 research and fishery management organizations gathered Monday and Tuesday at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota. They came from Canada and a dozen states, including Maine, Oregon, Louisiana and Mississippi.

USF, Mote and the National Wildlife Federation sponsored the meeting.

They plan to recommend a unified effort to study and manage the effects of the oil disaster as it ripples through the Gulf's marine web.

The Deepwater Horizon blowout on April 20 was clearly a disaster, but it's also an opportunity, said Michael Crosby, Mote senior vice president.

He called it a "wakeup call and an opportunity for us to begin to work together to bring together all of the information that is out there in a scientific way."

There's plenty of research going on, Crosby said, but no one's focusing it or organizing it to see the broader picture.

"We're calling, and there's urgency, for very applied research" to guide restoration efforts, Crosby said. "We need to act sooner, not later, not 10 to 20 years downstream."

It's crucial "that we make sure research is very focused on getting answers and providing information that will be focused on restoring the Gulf of Mexico."

Analyzed as a whole, the data could tell researchers if certain species are at risk, and public officials could act, imposing catch limits, for instance, to avert the loss, Hogarth said.

The group has realized this week, however, that some creatures may be past the point of saving.

Some Gulf species — certain sharks, for instance — were in trouble from overfishing when the Deepwater Horizon well blew, and the effects of all that oil in the water may have pushed them to their tipping point, Hogarth said.

A major concern of the group is that government agencies and BP aren't sharing all the data they're collecting in the Gulf.

John Hammond, regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation, said he understood the need for caution as the government assesses the extent of the damage and assigns blame. But the research data "should be shared with the general public and it should be shared with organizations prepared to act now."

The group will not produce formal recommendations until January, Crosby said.

But he said the members are likely to ask that a single group be established as a clearinghouse for all Gulf research related to the oil disaster and that it be based in the Gulf region.

"We all seem to be in favor of this," Hogarth said. "It's not trying to take anybody's authority away, but to try to be better coordinated."

Group members also agree that the fines collected from BP should come back to the Gulf, Crosby said.

"It's just common sense that the fines for the impact on this Gulf oil spill would come back to aid those impacts, as opposed to vanishing into the treasury of the United States of America."