Long term implications of the Oil Spill

The announcement that BP has successfully completed the static kill of the Macondo closes the first chapter of the story of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest marine oil spill in history. Taken with the Obama Administration’s announcement that the majority of the oil in the Gulf has dissipated it would appear that the disaster is coming to a close. But, like the oil that has contaminated the Gulf for the last four months, appearances here are slippery. Although the oil is no longer spewing into the Gulf, the United States will be dealing with the environmental costs of this disaster for years to come.

The costs of this disaster are far from being completely calculated but are likely to run into the tens of billions of dollars. Many of these costs are obvious or easily predictable – the jobs lost due to the drilling moratorium, the lost tourist dollars as people fled the coast, the jobs lost in the fishing industry – but the most lasting costs may be to the environment. Anyone paying attention to the disaster has seen images of oil coated birds and heard stories of turtles burned alive. The media has focused on these images and the damages to coastal estuaries and wetlands as oil contaminated these incredibly fragile ecosystems. But it is the hidden effects on the breeding cycle of many of the marine animals that call the Gulf home that may, in the end, be the most damaging.

The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon could not have come at a worse time for the marine animals which spawn in the Gulf of Mexico. These animals return to the Gulf each spring to breed and release eggs into the water. This year they did this ageless ritual in heavily polluted and contaminated water that significantly reduces the likelihood of the new generations survival. Even in a normal year only a very small percentage of the eggs released grow to be mature fish. The oil and chemicals released to fight it this year could dramatically increase the mortality of the new generation. While the exact impact on the survival of this year’s spawning is unclear, experts fear that it could be devastating.

Many of these species are already dangerously threatened from over-fishing. Species like the blue-fin tuna are already at levels low enough to be considered threatened by the U.N. These species – along with the sword fish and yellow fin tuna – have long life-spans and correspondingly long sexual maturation. As a result, the destruction of an entire generation could have serious long term implications on the population as a whole.

The most similar historic example is the impact that hydropower installations had on salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest in the early 90s. Like many of the species in the Gulf, the salmon return to the same locations each year to spawn. The installation of hydropower facilities in many of these rivers prevented their return and, as a result, they did not spawn. This did not have an immediate impact. Instead, populations remained steady for several years but 4-5 years after the installation of the dams – the time when the first generations not to spawn because of the dams would have been maturing – the population crashed.

Why does this matter? Because if this happens in the Gulf it could have a devastating impact on the fishing industry in the region. Many of the species that return to the Gulf each year, the Yellowfin Tuna for example, are already struggling at dangerously low population levels. A significant drop-off in production in one year could have permanent long-term effects on the vitality of the population. If this were to happen the short term pain that the fishing industry is currently going through could become a much more permanent phenomenon.

The fishing industry is clambering for Obama to lift his ban on fishing in areas affected by the spill so that they can return to fishing. Precisely the opposite needs to happen. The ban should be continued until more information is available about the survival rate of this year’s spawning generation. To do otherwise risks permanently damaging one of the most productive fisheries in the world.

The exhaustion of dozens of other fisheries the world over proves that fishers struggle to manage these resources in the best of times. Too often the short term considerations of profit outweigh long term management considerations. Combined with a disaster like the Macando spill whose effects may not be fully felt for five years or more, this mindset could have terrible consequences for Gulf fishing. And if fishing in the Gulf collapses the economic pain the region will be just as harsh as the pain they are currently feeling but even more permanent.