In April 2010, one of the world’s biggest environmental disasters happened off the coast of Louisiana. An explosion at the BP Deepwater Horizon caused the death of 11 rig workers and spilled over 150 million gallons of crude oil into the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  The Deepwater Horizon oil spill killed over 102,000 birds across 93 species and thousands of marine mammals, fish and sea turtles. The world watched helplessly as a black crude oil slick covering over more than 57,500 square miles contaminated habitats and wreaked havoc on nature.  The oil flowed for 87 days and the devastating legacy of this mammoth disaster are still being felt today.

 The immediate after-effects of the spill saw the ocean floor turned into a toxic dump. Somewhere between 5,000 and 7,500 adult sea turtles died and a further 150,000 juvenile sea turtles lost their lives in the oily waters. Over 15 species of dolphin and whale had demonstrable, quantifiable injuries. Bay, sound, and estuarine bottlenose dolphin stocks, coastal and shelf dolphin stocks, and oceanic whale and dolphin stocks were all damaged. Injuries included increased mortality, increased reproductive failure, and many adverse health effects. Despite the best efforts of environmental scientists and volunteer rescuers, the marine and bird life paid a high and ugly price for what was later identified as a lack of safety measures and negligence.  Eleven years after the catastrophe nature has not recovered. 

‘The beaches are back, but beneath the surface the damage has not been repaired. In one recent study scientists sampled 2,000 fish in the Gulf of Mexico and found all of them contaminated with oil’

Scientist monitoring the Barataria Bay area have found a higher incidence of reproductive failure, lung disease, heart problems and impaired stress response in bottle nose dolphins, which they are linking directly to the oil spill.   The symptoms match those faced by another large mammal, humans. 

Two studies, both published in 2018, found impaired lung and heart function and strained breathing, respectively, among clean-up workers and U.S. Coast Guard personnel who had been in contact with the oil.’ 

The disastrous effects of an oil spill of this magnitude had never been witnessed previously and has offered marine scientists an insight into the long-term debilitating devastation that spilled oil can cause.  Much of the oil sunk to the bottom of the ocean and lay on the seafloor, destroying bubble gum and bamboo coral reefs.  Peter Etnoyer, a marine biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Hollings Lab, studies deep-sea corals. Some were thriving very near Deepwater Horizon’s wellhead before the spill, according to seafloor surveys. After the spill, scientists found that half of those coral colonies—colourful, fan-shaped creatures called gorgonian octocoral—were extinct. “We don’t know how long it’s going to take these coral colonies to recover,” Etnoyer says. “They grow very, very slowly. The ones we found to be injured are on the order of decades to hundreds of years old.’

Unfortunately, it has been difficult to assess the damage to whales. As with other deep marine species, humans rarely see them and instead must opt to listening for signs of life.  One species that has been heard less and less these days is the pantropical spotted dolphin sparking fears that they may be gravely harmed by the spill.   It may take decades for scientists to quantify the damage that this oil spill had on the ecosystem and on the next generation of whales, coral, sea turtles, birds, fish, and more. In the wake of the disaster new regulations governing safety concerns on oil rigs at sea were introduced, but some of these were  subsequently rescinded by the Trump administration.

 In September 2014, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that BP was partly responsible for the oil leak as was Transocean, which owned the rigs.  The courts cited gross negligence and reckless conduct. BP agreed to pay out more than $20 billion in penalties and damages, with around $13 billion directed toward restoration and a vast research effort in the region.

Domestic kerosene oil spills should not be viewed lightly. If you think you may have a home heating oil leak, contact our 24-hour help line immediately. Always avoid touching heating oil with exposed skin or inhaling oil fumes, and keep children, pets and other family members away from areas where they can be exposed to oil fumes.