From the darkness emerges a boot. An old leather, steel-toed, work boot. It shouldn’t be there resting on the seafloor nearly two kilometers deep. I’m speachless. Even knowin this was going to be one of the toughest dives of my career, I’m still not prepared.

Seven years prior in 2010, Marla Valentine and Mark Benfield were the first scientist to visit the deep-sea floor after the Deepwater Horizon accident. On 20 April 2010, and continuing for 87 days, approximately 4 million barrels spilled from the Macondo Wellhead making it the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. Just months after the oil spill, Valentine and Benfield conducted video observations with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) of the deep-sea impact. Overall, they found a deep-sea floor ravaged by the spill. Much of the diversity was lost and the seafloor littered with the carcasses of pyrosomes, salps, sea cucumbers, sea pens, and glass sponges.

Researchers continued to find severe impacts on deep-sea life. The numerical declines were staggering within the first few months; forams (↓80–93%), copepods (↓64%), meiofauna (↓38%), macrofauna (↓54%) and megafauna (↓40%). One year later, the impacts on diversity were still evident and correlated with increases in total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and barium in deep-sea sediments. In 2014, PAH was still 15.5 and TPH 11.4 times higher in the impact zone versus the non-impact zone, and the impact zones still exhibited depressed diversity. Continued research on corals found the majority of colonies still had not recovered by 2017. However, studies examining the impacts of the DWH oil spill on most deep-sea life ended in 2014.

This gap in knowledge on the lingering impacts of one of the largest oil spills of all time is why I sit here in this cold, dark, ROV control room staring at a work boot in the abyss. A year prior, I had reached out to Mark Benfield about replicating his ROV methods and locations. I am here seven years after his study beginning to replicate his first video transect.

Within minutes of reaching the seafloor with the ROV, every scientist on the vessel staring at monitors showing live video from remote seafloor knew something was wrong. As Mark Benfield, Clif Nunnally, and I report in a new open-access article, the deep sea was not recovering at the impact site.  The seafloor was unrecognizable from the healthy habitats in the deep Gulf of Mexico, marred by wreckage, physical upheaval and sediments covered in black, oily marine snow.

Near the wreckage and wellhead, many of the animals characteristic of other areas of the deep Gulf of Mexico, including sea cucumbers, Giant Isopods, glass sponges, and whip corals, were absent.  What we observed was a homogenous wasteland, in great contrast to the rich heterogeneity of life seen in a healthy deep sea.

Conspicuously absent were the sessile animals that typically cling to any type of hard structure in an otherwise soft, muddy habitat.  Hard substrate in the deep sea is a valuable commodity but at the Deepwater Horizon site metal and other hard substrates were devoid of typically deep-sea colonizers.

The seafloor at impact site was characterized by high numbers of shrimps and crabs.  Crabs showed clearly visible physical abnormalities and sluggish behavior compared to the healthy crabs we had observed elsewhere.  We believe these crustaceans are drawn to the site because degrading hydrocarbons serve as luring sexual hormone mimics. Once these crustaceans reach the site they may become too unhealthy to leave much like those prehistoric mammals and the Le Brea tarpits.

The ROV dive began with a boot belonging to one of the workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig. The dive ended at the wellhead, now capped with a memorial to those workers who lost their lives. A dive bookended with reminders of the human tragedy of the oil spill. The narrative that unfolded between these was an environmental catastrophe. In an ecosystem that measures longevity in centuries and millennia the impact of 4 million barrels of oil continues to constitutes a crisis of epic proportions.

Valentine, Marla M., and Mark C. Benfield. “Characterization of epibenthic and demersal megafauna at Mississippi Canyon 252 shortly after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.” Marine Pollution Bulletin 77.1-2 (2013): 196-209.

McClain, Craig R., Clifton Nunnally, and Mark C. Benfield. “Persistent and substantial impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on deep-sea megafauna.” Royal Society Open Science 6.8 (2019): 191164.

The post The lingering and extreme impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the deep sea first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Just near 6 million liters of oil spilled out of Macondo well in 2010, about 6 supertankers worth of oil. The ramifications of the oil spill are still being documented and far reaching but included aberrant protein expression in fish gills, altered bacterial communities, and a whole suite nastiness in dolphins. At three different sites deep-sea corals appear to be impacted (study 1, study 2). Corals were covered with brown flocculent material and showed telltale signs of stress including excess mucus, enlargement of the skeletal elements (sclerites), and tissue loss. But new work suggests that it was not the oil that leads to unhealthy and dying corals rather dispersant.

Nearly 7 million liters of oil dispersants were applied during the cleanup efforts, 3 million of these in the deep sea directly near the wellhead. Yet little is known how oil and the dispersant, and the mixture of the two, impacts deep-sea corals. New work by Danielle DeLeo and colleagues sets out to address this in three different coral species. The group collected individual corals from the deep Gulf of Mexico using remote operated vehicles. On board corals were exposed to crude oil (collected from Macondo during the spill, dispersant (Corexit 9500A), a mixture of the two, and a seawater control.

All three deep-sea coral species examined showed more severe declines in health in response to dispersant alone and the oil-dispersant mixtures than the oil-only treatments. To restate, the dispersant was more toxic than the oil. Dispersants are known to disrupt the normal function of cell and organelle membranes. This means molecules are not transported normally across the membranes and cells cannot osmoregulate. Dispersant mixed with oil increases polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that organisms break down into toxic forms. Basically, the dispersant, as designed, increased the proportion of crude oil compounds that were biologically available.

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The post Given the choice, corals would prefer oil to dispersant first appeared on Deep Sea News.

WTF I hear you wanna be called Beyond Petroleum, now? Do you think you’re some kind of rap star or something?? Haha! Whatevs, let’s just go by our ole grade school nickname for you, BP.

I know its been a while since I last wrote. It’s not like I was neglecting you or anythang… but you know how it is bro, stuff comes up and we was all like into some other things here and there. But I’ve been keeping track of you, ya know, on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the news… Its cool, I know you’ve been busy too. Happens.

Anyways, just wanted to congratulate you on getting the government to let you hang a new deep water oil rig out in the Gulf of Mex. Must feel good to put the past behind you and move on. Man do we know all about that!! amirite or amirite bro?? So many crazy nights back in the day LOLOLOL! Glad its all behind us now.

I mean, only like 11 people died. Big deal, right? I mean more people have died from BP executives DUI’ing it up after a weekend of binge drinking their government subsidized monthly bonuses away. Man that was crazy shit! Do you still have Juliana’s number?? Cause I wrote it on my hand but spilled some of that Perrier-Jouet we was getting hammered on all over myself and it must have rubbed off. Help a brotha out, bro.

Anyways, you’ve earned it. Paid your dues. Done your time. Oh wait, no one was actually jailed for the manslaughter, EPA infringements, regulatory breaches and criminal neglect right? I guess its still an ongoing investigation, but I bet your boys are working ’em deep, amirite? *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*

I mean, how else did you get this great deal? As NRDC Senior Attorney David Pettit calls it a “$100 billion gamble”. For real though bro, let’s get it all cashed out in Sacagawea dollar coins and fill up an indoor swimming pool so we can do backstrokes Scrooge McDuck style!

Anyhow, glad to see ya back out in the ocean and as you say, “another milestone in our steady return to safely drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.” Cause seriously, dude, what’s safer than unsuccessfully drilling down in over 5000 feet of water? How about 6,034 feet of water! Amirite bro?? Piece of cake and that 3 billion barrels of hot, steamy crude will be so totez worth it. Those dolphins and sea turtles are just D-U-M-B! Why can’t they just swim around it? I mean, really, they got eyes and stuff. “Hey dolphin, look there’s a giant glob of oil, why not swim around it, duh.”

Oh and those poor people in the south probably had cancer from smoking and eating copious amount fry grease. Trying to blame sudden mysterious health problems on you is like super lame. Whatevs bro, I got your back.

Keep it real on the east side fool. Peace out, Kevvy Z

p.s. – Delta Tau Chi 4 life bro!!!!

The post Open Letter to My Bros at British Petroleum first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Pretty Slick movie clips (BP Gulf oil spill) from james fox on Vimeo.

The post Pretty Slick first appeared on Deep Sea News.

More bad news from the oil spill front. University of Georgia marine scientist Samantha Joye reporting findings from her fifth Gulf of Mexico expedition since the oil spill, noted the outlook is not optimistic.  Her team found multiple expanses of oil and soot-covered seafloor chemically linked to the BP Macondo deep sea well. The soot likely derived from the burning of oil that settled to the bottom. In this blanket is a large number of dead brittle stars, crabs, and tubeworms.  Keep in mind Joye’s team also warned about many studies overlooking the volume and impact of the 500,000 tons of methane also spilled into the Gulf.

I’ll leave you with this: “Apparently, the sheer quantity of sedimented oil, much of it trapped in a slimy mucilaginous matrix, simply overwhelmed and suffocated the sea floor microbial colonies that normally consume oil.”

The post Oil Spill Update: Deep-Sea Degradation first appeared on Deep Sea News.