Study-video: Desolate GoM sea floor

Above the plugged Macondo wellhead at the site of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, oily substances cover a yellow cement cap, covering the 11 stars memorializing those workers killed in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM)blowout. Normally-found marine life - sea cucumbers and whip corals - is vacant. Crabs seem to have black shells and show sluggish behavior, according to a recently released 2017 video by Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) researchers assessing recovery efforts. The video was taken seven years after 4M barrels of oil gushed from the wellhead into the Gulf. Mark Benfield, a professor of oceanography and coastal sciences at LSU, led monitoring of visible marine life for a year after the disaster. He found the lack of vitality seen in the video "disturbing." Benefield to NOLA.com: "Given the amount of time that's passed, I figured that the site would look normal or well into recovery. … I was surprised." Researchers published a study in August about the health of the site. The video-study was only possible because researchers were near the site of an unrelated project. No one is funding research into the impact of the Deepwater Horizon spill on the sea floor, according to Craig McClain, director of LUMCON. Getting money for deep sea research can be difficult because it's "out of sight, out of mind," he said. But damage to the sea floor ecosystem can permeate through the food chain, to commercial fisheries, and disrupt the process of the seas pulling carbon from the air and storing it in deep waters. (Soure: NOLA.com 102719) https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_f0b00ae6-f672-11e9-b106-6f10ec51579a.html