Sargassum Mats Bp Oil Spill

The commentary is a and provides a deep appreciation of this special floating world.

Sargassum mats bp oil spill.

The tragedy is the sargassum floating seaweed aka gulfweed along with its animal inhabitants is directly threatened by the bp deepwater horizon gulf oil spill. Floating mats of seaweed called sargassum provide key habitats for babies of many species now hopelessly contaminated. Large scale oil spill incidents have included an april 2017 spill at pointe à pierre trinidad and tobago and a july 2017 oil spill in kingston harbor jamaica. The interior and underside of these seaweed mats under normal conditions are wonderlands of life as every offshore fisherman knows.

A school of 3 pound mahi mahi shot from beneath the floating mat as they chased a swarm of sardines. Bp oil disaster is not a spill. Gulf oil spill threatens sargassum a vital floating habitat with video photo gallery. As the sargassum drifts with the wind and currents so does the oil.

That sargassum and all the creatures living in its leaves are particularly vulnerable to oil on the. Mark dodd a wildlife biologist from georgia s department of natural resources surveying oiled sargassum seaweed in the gulf of mexico after the deepwater horizon oil spill in 2010. Some of the oil sunk to the ocean floor preventing it from washing ashore. Illegal dumping of oil contaminated waste by ships operating in the region.

Alabama scientists investigated oil spill effects on floating sargassum a critical seaweed habitat for many important gulf species. More like a catastrophe. If an oil spill made its way somewhere like the sargasso sea a young sea turtle would encounter a much different scene. After the bp spill in the gulf of mexico however the crews also pumped dispersants 5 000 feet below the ocean surface.

Spilled oil carried by currents can also end up swirling among the seaweed. As the ocean currents brought the spill into contact with sargassum oil would coat those same snarled branches and bladders of the seaweed. In recent years the caribbean region has faced challenges from oil spills and an influx of floating sargassum seaweed.