Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill – Impacts Today

DeepRiver Oil Spill

I remember saying that the folks making a living in the area impacted by the oil spill would have their lives changed for the remainder of their lives.  I recently check to see how true that was.  As it relates to the quality of the seafood in the area, there seems to be no lasting impact:

A sampling of more than 1,000 Gulf of Mexico fish, shrimp, oysters and blue crabs taken from Cedar Key, Fla., to Mobile Bay, Ala., between 2011 to 2013, shows no elevated contaminant levels, according to a seafood safety study conducted by Dr. Andrew Kane and colleagues at the University of Florida. In fact, some 74 percent of the seafood tested showed no quantifiable levels of oil contaminants at all.
“Seafood appears as safe to eat now as it was before the spill,” said Dr. Andrew Kane, associate professor of environmental and global health and director of the Aquatic Pathobiology Laboratory at UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute.

I never would have believed that.

7 responses to “Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill – Impacts Today

  1. I’m not sure if I do! 🙂

    And besides, how does one pulling shrimp out of the ocean figure out whether they’ve got one of the 74% that aren’t contaminated or one of the other 26% that are? That’s still a 1 in 4 chance that you’re eating Quaker State, isn’t it?

  2. “Five years after the spill, Gulf seafood is probably safe to eat, if you can find it.”

    http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/after-oil-spill-gulf-seafood-industry-recovering

    • Five years after the spill, Gulf seafood is probably safe to eat, if you can find it.

      To be sure. I suspect that the recovery will take place across several spectrums; safety and supply being but two.

  3. My point being, you were relating the effects on the spill to the lasting effects on the fisherman who did and continue to try to make a living at harvesting the bounties of the gulf. You chose the quality of the seafood, which appears to be adequate to consume at this point. Supply and safety of what is found go hand in hand. If the spill has caused the supply to dwindle, there most certainly is a lasting impact.

    Your opening statement appears to be a very true statement at this point in time.
    “I remember saying that the folks making a living in the area impacted by the oil spill would have their lives changed for the remainder of their lives.”

    Quality, quantity, or any other issue caused by the spill can be factors in determining the long term effects of those fisherman. To say that their lives are not changed forever due to just one of these items (you chose quality) is turning a blind eye to the remaining effects of the spill. I cannot say whether their lives will be changed “forever” at this point, but there is no holistic evidence to show that the spill is not having real lasting effects.

    • Quality, quantity, or any other issue caused by the spill can be factors in determining the long term effects of those fisherman. To say that their lives are not changed forever due to just one of these items (you chose quality) is turning a blind eye to the remaining effects of the spill. I cannot say whether their lives will be changed “forever” at this point, but there is no holistic evidence to show that the spill is not having real lasting effects.

      All valid points. Supply and quality are all interwoven. Heck, even cost of obtaining; deeper or father out would impact that, are all variables.

      The point I’m making here is simple, at thhis point, quality is not the issue.

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