Oil Spill is Prime Suspect in Hundreds of Dolphin Deaths Kate Spinner - Herald-Tribune
go to original April 19, 2012

Dying dolphins and whales in the northern Gulf of Mexico cause concerns after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. (EPA)

Dying dolphins and whales in the northern Gulf of Mexico provide a grim reminder that the ecosystem there still has not recovered two years after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

More than 600 dolphins have been found fatally ill or dead since oil reached the Louisiana shoreline following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, 2010. This year alone, nearly 100 have washed up dead or deathly ill, mostly in Louisiana's Barataria Bay, where oil lingers in the marshes and sediment.

Signs increasingly implicate BP oil in the die-off, although federal scientists caution that they cannot yet draw a definitive link. The dolphins' illnesses are consistent with what marine biologists would expect from oil exposure: weight loss, anemia, low blood sugar, lung and liver disease, and dangerous hormone imbalances.

Dolphins remain healthy in areas of the Gulf not touched by oil, including Sarasota Bay, where scientists have tested for similar problems for comparison.

"We are concerned that many of the dolphins we evaluated in Barataria Bay are in such poor health that they are not likely to survive," Lori Schwacke, lead investigator for the dolphin studies and chief of the National Ocean Service's Oceans and Human Health branch, said during a recent news conference.

Dolphins are among the most visible casualties of the disaster, which killed 11 people and sent more than 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf. They also serve as sentinels for the entire ecosystem, which sustained damage beyond what is visible from shore or even the surface of the sea.

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