After The Spill Summary

The ocean and its inhabitants are still feeling the trauma of BP's huge spill. Despite many clean-uo efforts the poison has really sunk in for generations of sea life and with all of these dying and deformed population, other organisms are going to die soon too. These unfortunate man made events should make us look at our fuel systems and, even though most times cheaper than renewable, help us make an informed decision for future populations of all organisms. The deformities and population reductions are vast.

by Dahr Jamail 

"New Orleans, US - Hundreds of kilograms of oily debris on beaches, declining seafood catches, and other troubling signs point towards an ecosystem in crisis in the wake of BP's 2010 oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

"It's disturbing what we're seeing," Louisiana Oyster Task Force member Brad Robin told Al Jazeera. "We don't have any more baby crabs, which is a bad sign. We're seeing things we've never seen before."

Robin, a commercial oyster fisherman who is also a member of the Louisiana Government Advisory Board, said that of the sea ground where he has harvested oysters in the past, only 30 percent of it is productive now.

"We're seeing crabs with holes in their shells, other seafood deformities. The state of Louisiana oyster season opened on October 15, and we can't find any production out there yet. There is no life out there."

According to Robin, entire sectors of the Louisiana oyster harvest areas are "dead or mostly dead". "I got 10 boats in my fleet and only two of them are operating, because I don't have the production to run the rest. We're nowhere near back to whole, and I can't tell you when or if it'll come back."

State of Louisiana statistics confirm that overall seafood catch numbers since the spill have declined.

'Everything is down'

Robin is not the only member of the Gulf's seafood industry to report bleak news. Kathy Birren and her husband own Hernando Beach Seafood, a wholesale seafood business, in Florida.

Shrimp with tumours continue to be found along the impact zone, from Louisiana to Florida [Dean Blanchard]

"I've seen a lot of change since the spill," Birren told Al Jazeera. "Our stone crab harvest has dropped off and not come back; the numbers are way lower. Typically you'll see some good crabbing somewhere along the west coast of Florida, but this last year we've had problems everywhere."

Birren said the problems are not just with the crabs. "We've also had our grouper fishing down since the spill," she added. "We've seen fish with tar balls in their stomachs from as far down as the Florida Keys. We had a grouper with tar balls in its stomach last month. Overall, everything is down."

According to Birren, many fishermen in her area are giving up. "People are dropping out of the fishing business, and selling out cheap because they have to. I'm in west-central Florida, but fishermen all the way down to Key West are struggling to make it. I look at my son's future, as he's just getting into the business, and we're worried."

Dean Blanchard, owner of a seafood business in Grand Isle, Louisiana, is also deeply troubled by what he is seeing. "We have big tar mats coming up on Elmers Island, Fouchon, Grand Isle, and Grand Terre," Blanchard told Al Jazeera. "Every time we have bad weather we get fresh tar balls and mats."

Blanchard said his business generates only about 15 percent of what it did before the spill. "It looks like it's getting worse," he said. "I told my wife when she goes to the mall she can only spend 15 percent what she used to spend."

Blanchard has also seen shrimp brought in with deformities, and has taken photographs of shrimp with tumours (see above). Others lack eyes. He attributes the deformities to BP's use of toxic dispersants to sink the spilled oil. 

Eyeless shrimp, along with other seafood abnormalities, have become common in many areas along the Gulf Coast [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

"Everybody living down here watched them spray their dispersants day in and day out. They sprayed our bays and our beaches," he said. "We got a problem, because BP says they didn't spray down here, but we had a priest that even saw them spraying. So either we got a lying priest, or BP is lying."

BP and the Coast Guard have told the media they have never sprayed dispersants within 10 miles of the coast, and that dispersants have never been used in bays.

A decades-long recovery

On a more sombre note, Dr Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer and a marine biologist, believes it will likely take the Gulf decades to recover from the BP disaster.

"The impacts of the Ixtoc 1 blowout in the Bay of Campeche in 1979 are still being felt," said Cake, referring to a large oil spill near the Mexican coast, "and there are bays there where the oysters have still not returned. My prediction is we will be dealing with the impacts of this spill for several decades to come and it will outlive me."

According to Cake, blue crab and shrimp catches have fallen in Mississippi and Alabama since the spill, and he also expressed worries about ongoing dolphin die-offs. But his primary concern is the slow recovery of the region's oyster population.

"Mississippi recently opened their season, and their oyster fisherman are restricted to 12 sacks of oysters a day. But they can't even reach six," Cake said. "Thirty sacks would be a normal day for oysters - that was the previous limit - but that is restricted now because the stocks just aren't there."

Cake's conclusion is grim. "Here in the estuarine areas, where we have the oysters, I think it'll be a decade or two before we see any recovery."

BP previously provided Al Jazeera with a statement on this topic, a portion of which 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 naturally common, and that before the spill there was documented evidence of lesions in the Gulf of Mexico caused by parasites and other agents.

More oil found

The second phase of the ongoing federal trial against BP investigates whether the company's actions to halt the flow of oil during the blowout were adequate, and aims to determine how much oil was released.

"BP is mounting an aggressive legal and public relations campaign to shield itself from liability and minimise the amount of oil spilled in the Gulf, as well as the ongoing impacts from the disaster," said Jonathan Henderson, an organiser for the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group.

Even Louisiana's Republican Governor Bobby Jindal agrees. Jindal recently said, "Three and a half years later, BP is spending more money - I want you to hear this - they are spending more money on television commercials than they have on actually restoring the natural resources they impacted."

As far away from the blowout site as Florida, researchers continue to find oil in both Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay.

In Louisiana, according to the LA Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), more than 200 miles of shoreline have "some degree of oiling", including 14 miles that are moderately or heavily oiled. From March through August of this year, over three million pounds of oiled material have been collected in Louisiana, more than double the amount over the same time period last year. 

In addition, the CPRA reports that "investigations into the chemical composition of MC252 [BP's Macondo well] oil samples demonstrate that submerged oil is NOT substantially weathered or depleted of most PAH's [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons]," and "disputes…findings relied on by the USCG [US Coast Guard] that Deepwater Horizon oil is non-toxic".

The agency also expresses concerns that "submerged oil may continue to pose long term risk to nearshore ecosystems".

"New impacts to the Gulf's ecosystem and creatures also continue to emerge," Henderson told Al Jazeera. "This year alone, the National Marine Fisheries Service has recorded 212 dolphins and other marine mammal standings in the northern Gulf. A new scientific study conducted by NOAA, BP and university researchers also shows significant negative impacts on tiny organisms that live on the sea floor in a 57 square mile area around the Deepwater Horizon well site."

Numerous other impacts have been documented since the disaster began, including genetic disruptions forGulf killifish, harm to deepwater corals,^, and the die-off of tiny foraminifera that are an important part of the Gulf's food chain.

Ongoing studies continue to reveal toxins from BP's spill in water, soil, and seafood samples.

Meanwhile, fishermen in BP's impact zone wonder if things will ever return to normal. "Our future is very, very dim, and there are no sponge crabs out there, which is the future," Robin concluded. "I've never seen this in my lifespan. I'm not seeing a future, because everything out there is dead." (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/10/gulf-ecosystem-crisis-after-bp-spill-2013102065313544754.html)

Japan Summary

Becoming energy independent is a major "to do" for most peoples. Energy sustainability and independence could mean very drastic changes in the biosphere, economy and global market.
Japan is experimenting with different placement of wind turbines to become the largest off-shore wind farm in the world. Japan could really be doing themselves a favor by cutting into this early, blooming market. They could have a monopoly over Germany and other established power companies also trying to make this type of harvesting work.
There is the concern of disturbing the fish population and really putting lots of jobs and families in danger.

Japan Offshore

Japan's Offshore Wind Power Rises within Sight of Fukushima Nuclear Plant

That dream remains a far cry from today's reality. Wind power contributes barely 0.9 percent (2.6 gigawatts) of Japan's total power capacity, says Paul Scalise, a research fellow at the University of Tokyo. Japan has not tapped much offshore wind power potential, in part because it lacks the shallow coastal waters exploited by European offshore wind farms.

The Fukushima project, backed by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, is not the country's only venture into floating wind turbines. Japan's Ministry of the Environment is supporting a separate two-megawatt floating wind turbine near Kabashima Island that began operation on October 28. The projects use different technologies to stabilize the turbines against the ocean waves. Fukushima's turbine platform is a semisubmersible design with three buoyancy tanks arranged in a triangle around the turbine, Musial explains. By comparison, the Kabashima turbine platform represents a spar design that resembles a tall, thin buoy with much of its mass extending deep below the surface—offering greater inherent stability against the waves but requiring deeper waters for operation.

Norway first installed a spar design in its Hywind floating wind turbine in 2009, followed by Portugal's semisubmersible Windfloat turbine in 2011. But Japan's Fukushima project has made a mark with the world's first floating substation containing the electrical equipment needed to transfer power from turbines to shore.

Japan's offshore wind effort still faces big challenges, such as rough seas that make maintenance of wind farms difficult, Scalise says. He also warned of political obstacles raising the cost of such operations, including NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) protests and rights to shipping lanes and fishing zones. (The Fukushima project still has to negotiate with local fishermen to build more than the first three prototype turbines.) "The farther that developers build wind farms off the coast of Japan to avoid political protests from various conflicting interest-groups and the NIMBYists, the more expensive it becomes to build, maintain and transmit electric power back to onshore customers," Scalise says.

Studies have shown that once turbines are farther than 16 or 20 kilometers at sea, they appear to be mere dots on the horizon on a clear day or perhaps even invisible otherwise, one reason why the prototype may be anchored where it is. The Fukushima project aims to deploy the full-scale wind farm beyond the horizon to avoid NIMBY concerns. But visible or not, the first prototype turbine and substation are a sign that Japan's future could be one that rises from the sea." (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=japans-offshore-wind-power-rises-within-sight-of-fukushima-nuclear-plant)

unhealthy ocean

Decline Summary

Basically the ocean is on the brim of extinction. The water is toxic, the organisms are dying and the temperature is rising. Mostly humans are to blame and we have not given the ocean the praise or credit she deserves. There are many large scale issues that need to be addressed and we are no longer just at the tip of the iceberg. We need a marriage of science, a PR specialist and government officials to pull this off.

Health of oceans 'declining fast'

"By Roger Harrabin

Environment analyst

The health of the world’s oceans is deteriorating even faster than had previously been thought, a report says.

A review from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), warns that the oceans are facing multiple threats.

They are being heated by climate change, turned slowly less alkaline by absorbing CO2, and suffering from overfishing and pollution.

The report warns that dead zones formed by fertiliser run-off are a problem.

It says conditions are ripe for the sort of mass extinction event that has afflicted the oceans in the past.

It says: “We have been taking the ocean for granted. It has been shielding us from the worst effects of accelerating climate change by absorbing excess CO2 from the atmosphere.

“Whilst terrestrial temperature increases may be experiencing a pause, the ocean continues to warm regardless. For the most part, however, the public and policymakers are failing to recognise - or choosing to ignore - the severity of the situation.”

It says the cocktail of threats facing the ocean is more powerful than the individual problems themselves.

Coral reefs, for instance, are suffering from the higher temperatures and the effects of acidification whilst also being weakened by bad fishing practices, pollution, siltation and toxic algal blooms.

Atmospheric threshold

IPSO, funded by charitable foundations, is publishing a set of five papers based on workshops in 2011 and 2012 in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN’s) World Commission on Protected Areas.

The reports call for world governments to halt CO2 increase at 450ppm. Any higher, they say, will cause massive acidification later in the century as the CO2 is absorbed into the sea.

It urges much more focused fisheries management, and a priority list for tackling the key groups of chemicals that cause most harm.

It wants the governments to negotiate a new agreement for the sustainable fishing in the high oceans to be policed by a new global high seas enforcement agency.

The IUCN’s Prof Dan Laffoley said: "What these latest reports make absolutely clear is that deferring action will increase costs in the future and lead to even greater, perhaps irreversible, losses.

"The UN climate report confirmed that the ocean is bearing the brunt of human-induced changes to our planet. These findings give us more cause for alarm – but also a roadmap for action. We must use it."

'Extinction risk'

The co-coordinator, Prof Alex Rogers from Oxford University has been asked to advise the UN's own oceans assessment but he told BBC News he had led the IPSO initiative because: "It’s important to have something which is completely independent in any way from state influence and to say things which experts in the field felt was really needed to be said."

He said concern had grown over the past year thanks to papers signalling that past extinctions had involved warming seas, acidification and low oxygen levels. All are on the rise today.

He agreed there was debate on whether fisheries are recovering by better management following examples in the US and Europe, but said it seemed clear that globally they were not.

He also admitted a debate about whether overall climate change would increase the amount of fish produced in the sea. Melting sea ice would increase fisheries near the poles whilst stratification of warmer waters in the tropics would reduce mixing of nutrients and lead to lower production, he said.

He said dead zones globally appeared to be increasing although this may reflect increased reporting.

"On ocean acidification, we are seeing effects that no-one predicted like the inability of fish to detect their environments properly. It’s clear that it will affect many species. We really do have to get a grip on what’s going on in the oceans," he said." (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24369244)