Scientist Optimistic About Marine Life In Gulf
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RAZ: You sound somewhat optimistic, am I reading that correctly?
Dr. ASPER: Well, you know, people tell me that. I guess so. The thing that I see in this is that when you look at the damage the oil does on the surface when it gets into the marshes and into the sensitive nursery areas and the estuaries, the damage is pretty obvious. And it can be fairly severe.
But out on the open ocean, especially down at these steps, there are microbes down there that are basically designed to handle this. That's what they eat for a normal meal. So, they are actually getting a lot more probably than they're used to eating. But on the other hand, it's normal food for them. It's not a foreign substance.
The dispersants, of course, that's a different story. The drilling mud, that's a different story as well. But in terms of the raw hydrocarbons coming out of the ocean, it's not that foreign to them.
RAZ: Can we assume that marine life continues to swim through these plumes?
Dr. ASPER: In the deep sea, yes. I think you can pretty safely assume that it's swimming through it. And actually up on the surface, one of the things that's kind of remarkable is that we see lots of fish when we stop at night to put our sampling package into the water, we see quite a few rather large fish and they seem to be oblivious to it.
We've seen dolphins, of course. We've seen all kinds of things. We saw (unintelligible) out there and some of them are kind of oiled up. But we've seen crabs around there, very few dead things on the surface, which is kind of surprising. We have seen dead jellyfish and a few things like that. But all in all, the impact out there seems to be less conspicuous.
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npr.org |
