Corals reveal slow-motion damage

In the years since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spit the Gulf of Mexico, the largest in U.S. history, scientists have been monitoring the annual effects from the seafloor in a remotely operated underwater vehicle. Oil particles and chemical dispersants released hijacked phytoplankton and flecks’ ride on biological debris that would naturally fall to the bottom. Today, as the President and Congress are pushing expansion of offshore drilling, scientists are still coming to grips with the effects on deep-sea corals within the GoM’s ecosystem. Scientists are saying the story of slow-growing corals could take as long as “hundreds of years” to get back to what was lost, according to Erik Cordes, a deep-sea ecologist from Temple University who has been studying the GoM since 2010. Scientists estimate 15-to-30 percent of the spill settled on the bottom. Cordes is part of the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs group, a research consortium that has been monitoring multiple coral sites annually. Research funding has offered a rare chance to study the same corals year after year, allowing for new insights into the effects of oil contamination and the role of deep-sea corals in the GoM ecosystem. (Source: News Deeply 11/27/17)