ANNA MARIA ISLAND – Three years ago this week, just about everyone on Anna Maria Island was wondering whether they would wake up and see oil washing up on the beach from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which began on April 20, 2010, in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
As oil continued to spill for three months, unprecedented sightings of deepwater whale sharks in shallow local waters, fish covered with lesions, strange odors in the air and peculiar tastes in the water fueled fears about tourism, layoffs, business failures, health problems and a devastated environment.
Such fears, realized in north Florida, dispersed here as time passed, especially after the oil well was capped on July 15 and no oil had been spotted on local beaches.
Judges said the reporter “… did a fine follow-up story on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill… she showed readers how much was left undone three years later.”
First Place
Agricultural and Environmental Reporting
2013
Since then, high tourism numbers show that tourists have regained their confidence that Anna Maria Island beaches were not hit by the oil. Local businesses and employees have collected money from the disaster at the oil rig, owned by Transocean Ltd. and under contract to BP, for economic losses from cancelled trips based on tourist misperceptions. Commercial fishermen have netted cash for not being able to fish during and after the spill in parts of the Gulf. Local men and women who traveled north to help in the cleanup have received compensation for health problems resulting from exposure to the oil.
But no one really knows the full picture of what the spill did and is still doing to the environment, and what long-term effects may be coming.
Many species affected
Research shows that the oil and the chemical dispersant Corexit used to make the oil mix with water – which keeps it from coming ashore but makes it impossible to clean up – have created a dead zone on the floor of the northern Gulf, killing marine life from microscopic organisms right up the food chain to apex predators like dolphins.
Dolphins are still dying in high numbers in the areas affected by oil, according to Doug Inkley, senior scientist for the National Wildlife Federation and lead author of the report, “Restoring a Degraded Gulf of Mexico: Wildlife and Wetlands Three Years into the Gulf Oil Disaster.”
Ongoing dolphin deaths are a strong indication that “there is something amiss with the Gulf ecosystem,” he wrote in the report, which states that dolphin deaths in the area affected by oil have been above average every month since the spill.
The report also cites a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study that called the dolphin deaths “unprecedented,” and ruled out the most common causes of previous dolphin die-offs.
Mote Marine Laboratory scientists in Sarasota are monitoring local dolphin populations for signs of oil effects, taking samples of their skin and testing for environmental contaminants.
They also are doing similar research on sharks, tunas, billfish and loggerhead sea turtles, a threatened species that nests on Anna Maria Island beaches from May through October. Loggerheads with satellite tracking devices showing they swam through the oil spill nested on local beaches.
Coral colonies also have been affected, according to Mote researchers, who have concluded that coral larvae common in the Florida Keys die sooner when exposed to the oil and Corexit.
University of South Florida scientists have discovered that even smaller creatures, called foraminifera, were killed by the oil, possibly affecting the rest of the food chain.
Some of the record high manatee deaths in the state were attributed to the spill by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; manatees that frequent local waters migrated to and from the northern Gulf after the spill.
Local bird life also has been affected, with North Dakota State University researchers discovering Corexit in dead eggs of white pelicans, a northern bird that winters near the Island in Cortez.
BP and affiliated Deepwater Horizon companies currently are on trial in federal court for violations of environmental laws in connection with the disaster, which killed 11 people.
Manatee County and all three Island cities have prepared lists of environmental projects they will submit to the state for a share in the expected recovery if the verdict is guilty as expected.
