The BP oil spill from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout continues to show its catastrophic environmental impact, years later, whether it is research showing the truly negative results being felt by the coral communities of the Gulf or the first study linking dolphin deaths between 2010-2012 to BP’s environmental negligence. At the time of the first dolphin-death study, BP said that the data they had seen didn’t show a connection between the largest oil spill in history and the marine life living in that oil spill. A new study has just been released that focuses on dolphin baby mortality rates and pregnant dolphin health from 2010-2014. Researchers compared dolphins found inside and outside of the spill zone.
By comparing 69 young bottlenose dolphins that washed up dead in the spill zone to 26 others found in areas unaffected by the oil, the team found that the young dolphins, which died in the womb or shortly after birth, “were significantly smaller than those that stranded during previous years and in other geographic locations.”
A total of 88 percent of baby dolphins found in the spill zone had lung abnormalities, including partially or completely collapsed lungs.
The most distressing part of this study is not something most environmentalists or people who have the cognitive ability to make cold cereal didn’t already suspect—environmental damage of this sort affects generations of life, not just the animals asphyxiated by the event itself.
In addition to the baby dolphin deaths, researchers found that the spill-zone dolphins were “particularly susceptible to late-term pregnancy failures, signs of fetal distress and development of in utero infections including brucellosis,” a bacterial infection.
“These findings support that pregnant dolphins experienced significant health abnormalities that contributed to increased fetal deaths or deaths of dolphin neonates shortly after birth,” said lead author Kathleen Colegrove, a veterinary diagnostic laboratory professor at the University of Illinois.
BP has yet to respond to this new study. Between admitting to felonies and having judges call them “grossly negligent,” my guess is that their response will go something like this:
We haven’t seen the data but we have a guy that looked out over a yacht and didn’t see any oil the other day, so there’s that.
Hopefully, this lesson stays learned.