Oil could cause ‘catastrophic’ wildlife damage
Oil could cause ‘catastrophic’ wildlife damage
Wildlife experts say the massive oil slick approaching the shores of Florida’s Panhandle and the Big Bend couldn’t be coming at a worse time for marine species and birds and its impact could be “catastrophic.”
“Any event of such magnitude that impinges on coastal habitats is likely to be catastrophic for the environment for years to come,” said Felicia Coleman, head of Florida State’s Marine Laboratory. “If the Exxon Valdez spill is the best example – and there is every indication that this one could be far worse – it could take decades for recovery to occur in these areas, if it can at all.”
It is not yet known when the oil plume, now approximately the size of Delaware and growing by the day, will reach Florida shores. It is currently moving north and officials say it could reach about 30 miles offshore of Pensacola by Thursday.
If it moves into the Big Bend area, Coleman said the most serious environmental cost of the spill would be the destruction of critical habitat, including sea grass meadows, salt marshes and oyster reefs. Such areas provide shoreline protection, erosion control, waste treatment and are essential nursing grounds for many key species.
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“Loss of these foundation species can precipitate considerable erosion and change the face of the region completely,” said Coleman, a member of the Oil Spill Academic Task Force, formed this week in response to the spill.
When asked which species were most at risk, Cypress Rudloe of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Panacea answered simply: “All of them.”
Rudloe expressed serious concern about horseshoe, fiddler and blue crabs now laying eggs, as well as the many fish species that depend on the area’s abundant salt marshes and tidal pools to reproduce.
“This is a very fragile ecosystem,” Rudloe said. “This could be the end of this aquarium, this could be the end of this coastline. I am scared … it couldn’t be at a worse time or a worse place.”
Bracing for the worst
Nesting season for threatened and endangered sea turtles season began Saturday, with the turtles returning to their birthplaces to lay eggs. Bill Wargo, head of Alligator Point’s volunteer turtle patrol, said he found a dead loggerhead near Bald Point on Sunday, but its death did not appear to be related to the spill. Finding stranded turtles is not unusual at this time of year. Another dead sea turtle was found at St. George Island, Wargo said, also seemingly not spill-related.
But Wargo is uneasy about what could be coming. More than 20 sea turtles have washed up along the Mississippi coast in recent days. The reptiles did not show external signs of oil contamination, and necropsies didn’t find evidence of oil-tainting, but the timing has turtle watchers worried.
“We are all braced up, waiting for the oil spill (to arrive) and hoping it doesn’t happen,” Wargo said.
Norm Griggs, a Crawfordville veterinarian who’s registered with BP as a clean-up volunteer, said he’s most concerned about the birds — the dead ones he expects to see washing up on shore and the oil-coated ones he expects to try to save.
“It’s almost a doomsday scenario. We can help them,” Griggs said of affected birds that he may soon be caring for. “But long term, how are we going to get them their life back?”
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“The open-ended nature of it is the thing that is scaring me the most,” Griggs said.
The timing of the spill is terrible for beach-nesting shorebirds. Migratory birds such as plovers, oyster catchers and terns that make their nests on beaches, have arrived on the shores of the Big Bend and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast.
Margo Zdravkovic, director of the Coastal Bird Conservation Program, is currently surveying shorebirds as part of a previously scheduled count on the shores of Louisiana near the growing oil slick. She hasn’t seen any affects of the oil yet, but her dread is growing.
“This is very hard (and) I am taking it day by day,” she said on her iPhone from the beach in Louisiana. “I’m really worried … when we get into the affected areas, we may be documenting what we have lost.”
Along the Forgotten Coast, it is now a waiting game.
“The magnitude of the spill is huge and it really depends on where that oil goes,” said Tom Frazer, associate director of the University of Florida’s School of Forest Resources and Conservation. “The potential impacts are clear, whether or not they are manifested.
“We have to wait and see.”