Marine life may suffer long after public forgets oil spill

Lindsay Peterson - 

While the public has moved on from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, scientists and fisheries managers worry it may have sparked a cascade of events that will lead to the collapse of entire Gulf species.

It happened to the herring after the Exxon Valdez oil spill 20 years ago.

But marine scientists meeting in Sarasota this week say Gulf creatures at risk could be spared if private and public agencies pool their knowledge of the effect of the oil and the state of the Gulf before the BP blowout.

"This is extremely important at this stage of the game," said William Hogarth, dean of the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida.

The government plans to collect billions from BP in fines, but scientists and fishery managers who want some of that money will have to back up their protection and restoration plans with hard data, he said.

Representatives from more than 25 research and fishery management organizations gathered Monday and Tuesday at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota. They came from Canada and a dozen states, including Maine, Oregon, Louisiana and Mississippi.

USF, Mote and the National Wildlife Federation sponsored the meeting.

They plan to recommend a unified effort to study and manage the effects of the oil disaster as it ripples through the Gulf's marine web.

The Deepwater Horizon blowout on April 20 was clearly a disaster, but it's also an opportunity, said Michael Crosby, Mote senior vice president.

He called it a "wakeup call and an opportunity for us to begin to work together to bring together all of the information that is out there in a scientific way."

There's plenty of research going on, Crosby said, but no one's focusing it or organizing it to see the broader picture.

"We're calling, and there's urgency, for very applied research" to guide restoration efforts, Crosby said. "We need to act sooner, not later, not 10 to 20 years downstream."

It's crucial "that we make sure research is very focused on getting answers and providing information that will be focused on restoring the Gulf of Mexico."

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