Oil may not yet be washing ashore in large quantities in Louisiana but an environmental disaster is already unfolding deep down in the Gulf of Mexico and in the swirling currents on its surface, experts warned Thursday. "Everyone is focusing on the beaches and coastal wetlands, which, goodness knows are important enough, but we're missing many of the already ongoing ecological effects of the spill," Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, told reporter.
Louisianans and Floridians were warily watching their beaches and wetlands and laying down booms to trap any sludgy mixtures of oil and sea organisms that might wash ashore in key tourist and wildlife expanses on the U.S. Gulf coast.
Wildlife officials in Louisiana Thursday reported finding two lifeless oil-coated gannets in fishing waters near the Grand Gosier Islands off the coast of the southern state.
But other, much less visible, lethal effects of the spill could have an equal if not greater impact on the region.
Toxins in the crude oil that is still flooding out of the pipework of a sunken rig, mix with the tiny larvae of sea animals that move with the surface currents to nearby and far-away spawning zones.
"That surface zone is where the oil is at its most toxic and the animals are at their most sensitive," said Rader.
"This could wipe out an entire generation of snappers, groupers and other fish."
If the oil gets into areas where fish are spawning, "You're affecting the offspring, so that could have effects for a couple years," said LuAnn White, a toxicologist at Tulane University's Center for Applied Environmental Public Health.
With the complex network of currents in the northern Gulf threatening to overlap the spill area and suck the pollution downstream, "a whole litany of really important essential habitat and ecosystems" are in danger, said Rader.
"People have been thinking of the beaches and wetlands of the northern Gulf in terms of shorebirds and people sitting on the beaches, and hotels and tourism, but the surfzone just adjacent to the beach is a really important foraging ground for all sorts of sea creatures."
Of course, the oil doesn't just float on the surface and latch onto currents heading to Florida, the western Atlantic and potentially into the Gulf Stream.
It is also taken up and held onto by particles that sink to the bottom of the sea in a drizzle of hydrocarbons and toxins.
"The reason that's disproportionately important with this spill is because where the spill is overlies one of the most important ancient deepwater coral reefs in the northern Gulf - Viosca Knoll," said Rader.
Coral reefs not only provide protection and shelter for many species of fish but also help to control how much carbon dioxide is in ocean waters and protect coastlines from strong currents and waves.
"The oil spill is raining down little bits and pieces of toxic material on this multi-thousand-year-old reef," said Rader.
