Biologist fears Gulf oil threat to dolphins
"We will brace for the worst if the oil comes here, but we don't think there is any protection we can give to the dolphins if it does. What will happen if they can't move away from it? It scares the hell out of me," Randall Wells said in a telephone interview this morning, shortly after returning to his Sarasota laboratory after a morning on the water conducting an emergency survey of dolphins he has studied since 1970.
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We still don't have the faintest idea how much oil is spewing out of the well in the Gulf. Nor do we have the faintest idea what the full environmental consequence of what may well be the biggest single-event human-caused. ecological disaster of all time (the very fact that I have to add the word…
Now he's a captive dolphin rescuer speaking about those training Navy dolphins to find enemy mines. Or was in 2003 at least. This is another from the vault, and like the last, another from someone else's vault. Brent Hoff interviews Richard O'Barry.
See below for full text, which originally…
By Elizabeth Grossman
"I've never seen anything like it," says David Willman, who has nearly 15 years' experience captaining supply boats that support oil rigs and drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. "We're seeing pods of whales and dolphins out in the oil and lots of dead things," he tells…
By Elizabeth Grossman
In mid-June most of the seafood shacks along the bayou roads between New Orleans and Grand Isle were closed. A seafood market that I stopped by on the western edge of New Orleans was virtually devoid of customers despite bins brimming with bright blue crab and tawny shrimp.…
Did you see this image?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=44375
Got it through Bad Astronomy.
In perspective: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=29.802518,-87.802…
Or this: http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/
This is the consequence of a cannibal ape learning to play with fire. The price we pay for an age of happy motoring. Dolphins don't matter, being able to commute to work does. We can do without Gulf seafood but that truck had better not quit delivering beer to the convenience store Bubba stops at on the way home from work! An earthquake in Haiti (remember that?), oil spill in the GOM... how long can a story captivate the viewing public's attention? How many pictures of oiled dolphins & pelicans can people look at before losing interest? About time for a terrorist attack, or hurricane, or something, to revive interest in the news.
The maps posted in the comments above are just terrifying. What a shame! It's hard to even comprehend the magnitude of this spill or the lasting effects it will have on the gulf ecosystem.
I can appreciate Dr. Well's quote. We work with several cetacean populations on the Pacific side. I can only imagine how our students and researchers would react to a catastrophe of this proportion...
For anyone living along the gulf coast area or looking to volunteer, the NOAA published a guide for dealing with oiled, injured and dead animals. It's worth having a look: NOAA Response Plans