BP oil spill: The 'horribly mutated' creatures living in the Gulf. Fish, shrimp, and crabs are missing eyes and suffering strange deformities, according to a harrowing new report — yet the FDA insists the seafood's safe to eat.
Shrimp born without eyes, clawless crabs, and fish with visible tumors are among the "horrible mutated"marine animals found in the waters off the Gulf Coast, according to a new report from Al Jazeera. Scientists say the problem is a side effect of the April 2010 explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which killed 11 people and spilled at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. Here, a brief guide to the damage:
"The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."
Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.
Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants.
Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster.
Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.
Eyeless shrimp
Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.
"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.
According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP's oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: "Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets."
"Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico]," Tracy Kuhns added, "They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don't have their usual spikes … they look like they've been burned off by chemicals."
Among the disturbing mutations: Shrimp with tumors on their heads; fish that lack eyes or are missing flaps over their gills; fish with oozing sores; crabs with holes in their shells; crabs that are missing claws and spikes, or are encased in soft shells instead of hard ones.
Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing.
"I've seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out," Ladner told Al Jazeera. "The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday."
While on a shrimp boat in Mobile Bay with Sidney Schwartz, the fourth-generation fisherman said that he had seen shrimp with defects on their gills, and "their shells missing around their gills and head".
"We've fished here all our lives and have never seen anything like this," he added.
Ladner has also seen crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one of their claws.
Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs "with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they've been dead for a week".
Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills.
"We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills."
Is it just the oil that caused mutations?
No. Also to blame are the nearly 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol, used for the subsequent clean-up. The solvents used in the aftermath of the spill, long known to be "mutagenic," are powerful enough to dissolve oil, grease, and rubber, says Casey Chan at Gizmodo. That's great for sopping up oil, "but terrible for the environment.""The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber," Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor told Al Jazeera. "It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known".
The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP's disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.
Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic - able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus - and carcinogenic.
Cowan believes chemicals named polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), released from BP's submerged oil, are likely to blame for what he is finding, due to the fact that the fish with lesions he is finding are from "a wide spatial distribution that is spatially coordinated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon, both surface oil and subsurface oil. A lot of the oil that impacted Louisiana was also in subsurface plumes, and we think there is a lot of it remaining on the seafloor".
Dr Wilma Subra, a chemist and Macarthur Fellow, has conducted tests on seafood and sediment samples along the Gulf for chemicals present in BP's crude oil and toxic dispersants.
"Tests have shown significant levels of oil pollution in oysters and crabs along the Louisiana coastline," Subra told Al Jazeera. "We have also found high levels of hydrocarbons in the soil and vegetation."
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, PAHs "are a group of semi-volatile organic compounds that are present in crude oil that has spent time in the ocean and eventually reaches shore, and can be formed when oil is burned".
"The fish are being exposed to PAHs, and I was able to find several references that list the same symptoms in fish after the Exxon Valdez spill, as well as other lab experiments," explained Cowan. "There was also a paper published by some LSU scientists that PAH exposure has effects on the genome."
What does BP say?
"Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world," the energy company says in a statement. And "according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident."
Al Jazeera contacted the office of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who provided a statement that said the state continues to test its waters for oil and dispersants, and that it is testing for PAHs.
"Gulf seafood has consistently tested lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the levels of oil and dispersant contamination that would pose a risk to human health," the statement reads. "Louisiana seafood continues to go through extensive testing to ensure that seafood is safe for human consumption. More than 3,000 composite samples of seafood, sediment and water have been tested in Louisiana since the start of the spill."
BP refused Al Jazeera's request to comment on this issue for a television interview, but provided a statement that read:
"Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident."
The FDA, EPA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) all refused to comment on the awfulness that's happening in the Gulf. BP, the company who created this mess in the first place, refuse to take the blame, saying the seafood in the Gulf is "as safe now as it was before the accident." The evidence, of course, indicates otherwise.
Eddie L. is the founder and owner of WorldTruth.TV. This website is dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 30+ years researching Bible, History, Secret Societies, Symbolism, and Kabbalah
18 comments
Elvis June 11, 2012 12:14 pm
In the event another spill ever occurs, might try concentrated Dawn it takes grease out of your way. How many ducks have been cleaned with it and have had no permanant damage?
Books June 10, 2012 9:52 pm
This is crazy. How is this not in the news everyday?
mothman777 June 10, 2012 5:17 pm
And Barack Obama cancelled contracts to import seafood from abroad for his armed forces, after the news that sea life in the Gulf was affected in this way, and then stated that those service people of the USA were from then on to eat seafood caught in the Gulf of Mexico. Something is very fishy there all right.
When children are born to America's armed service people suffering similar disabling conditions to the seafood their parents have eaten, will those service people of the USA have any strength left in them to do what they ought to have done years ago?
wray edwards June 10, 2012 5:02 pm
“Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident.”
TESTED FOR WHAT??!!
Nowhere do we see mention of radioactivity. One of the big problems in the petroleum industry is the deposition of radioactive scales inside their pipes, which have to be reamed and cleaned from time-to-time. Moreover, the super deep wells involved here produce "new petroleum" which is very different from your every day oil.
Conventional wells produce, on average, a product which is 8% methane, whereas these super deep wells yield oil that is 40% methane!! Why should that be a problem? It is a problem because methane ratios are a direct indicator of another problem.
Thorium, strontium and other radioactive substances increase in tandem with methane. That means that not only is there FIVE TIMES as much methane in deep well oil, there is FIVE TIMES as much thorium and other radioactive substances in the oil.
To blame NALCO, "COREXIT" and "PHA's" without mentioning radioactivity is disingenuous to say the least. It is criminal for all concerned who are covering up the FACT that many gulf residents are presenting to medical authorities and environmental authorities with classical symptoms of radiation poisoning.
Obviously BP, the EPA and other vested interests are terrified of the nuclear radiation issues associated with deep well enterprises. Big petroleum and their buddies over at big nuclear have the planet in a death grip financially and from an ecological perspective.
"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."
General Omar Bradley
The eyeless shrimp, fish with lesions and other mutations are a clear sign of the tandem threats presented to the Gulf, its flora, fauna and human populations.
It is a big mess not unlike the incredible damage being done in the middle east what with more than six thousand tons of depleted uranium weapons being dumped into Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan.
We are, after all, being subjected to radiation from the Gulf, all of our nuclear reactors and Fukushima for good measure.
What goes around . . . comes around.
Joe BAssett June 10, 2012 4:18 pm
Two billion won't even touch the loss. You will be talking more like 100 billion. The cigarette industry had to pay out tens of billions and these guys should have to pay out every dime the got. If this destroys the gulf how much in fish, shrimp, crabs, and oysters will they lose?
Incriminally Sane June 10, 2012 1:55 pm
It seems as though there is a concerted effort to destroy the earths water as a means to kill millions of people. They have already destroyed the Pacific and the gulf and it seems like they are now working on the great lakes region with radiation spikes at the Indiana / Michigan border. no matter what you think, something very nefarious is happening and the people of the earth are going to suffer for it very soon.
Joshua June 10, 2012 6:40 am
Drivel. Those chemicals were not "released," past tense. They're STILL BEING RELEASED AT THE SAME LEVELS AS THEY WERE FROM THE BEGINNING.
The Gulf is being deliberately poisoned. Al Jazeera pretends to bring news while deliberately creating the impression that the problem is a holdover from a past event. It's not. It's an ongoing unindicted multiple felony.