Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common

[kpete]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Lone_Star_Dem (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: aljazeera

New Orleans, LA - "The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."

...............................

Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants.

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.

Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241682318260912.html?utm_content=features&utm_campaign=features&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=rss&utm_medium=tweet

[Roland99]

1. Mayor Vaughn says open the beaches!!

[madrchsod]

2. bbc and al jazeera are the only news organizations that are covering this globally

in fact i get most of my news from bbc overnight and the web. i have`t listen to any msn programs in years.

[closeupready]

7. I may make al-jazeera my homepage for news.

BBC is not my favorite source; they have a parochial bent, at times.

[marshall gaines]

20. nothing

there is nothing on mainstream american media about this situation and i'm not at all surprised.

[The Stranger]

22. Televisions in the U.S. are running non-stop the commercials showing BP saving the pristine-again

Gulf coast. They have a shill toady spokesman who appears every fucking 15 minutes in the commercials, and every time I see his disgusting face I damn him for all eternity.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Notice that this information is not published in any media in this country.

Aljazeera is the only source that demonstrates any independence.

[dipsydoodle]

23. That's an Al Jazeera Feature : not news

Hence why your media are not covering. They could only reprint such a feature by paying for it.

[nolabear]

4. They are killing my coast, and don't give one good goddamn.

Those bastards have the full support of the GOP while they destroy water resources, wildlife, and the living that good people have struggled to create for generations. Then when their jobs and the economy collapses they will sneer at them and snark about the "dignity of work" as they just keep on raping it all.

I'd say I could weep, but I have run out. The only thing we can do is vote and vote and vote until, maybe, we get some people with enough sense to realize we're killing everything and everyone with these stupid, stupid policies. God, I hope we can.

[ceile]

10. +1 n/t

[jwirr]

16. But it was not just them. When we all wanted to stop the drilling in the gulf the workers in that

area and the governors threw a fit because there would not be oil drilling jobs. I can see their point but sooner or later we are going to have to decide that oil is not king.

[marshall gaines]

21. okay

i'm with you. hopefully.

[tk2kewl]

5. K&R

for visibility

[drm604]

6. K&R

[bluedigger]

8. Good news for lobstermen and clamdiggers.

The rest of us, not so much.

[Voice for Peace]

9. this is so sad but so important for people to know about

these deadly disasters that keep on giving, long after MSM has moved on.

[CrispyQ]

11. If our media would even cover this story, it would be full of excuses like,

"However, we can't know for certain that this is caused by the BP oil spill." I can just hear Blitzer spew the corporate propaganda in his robotic monotone.

Cake*, who lives in Mississippi, added: "It has been more than 33 years since the 1979 Ixtoc-1 oil disaster in Mexico's Bay of Campeche, and the oysters, clams, and mangrove forests have still not recovered in their oiled habitats in seaside estuaries of the Yucatan Peninsula. It has been 23 years since the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska, and the herring fishery that failed in the wake of that disaster has still not returned."

Cake believes we are still in the short-term impact stage of BP's oil disaster.

"I will not be alive to see the Gulf of Mexico recover," said Cake, who is 72 years old. "Without funding and serious commitment, these things will not come back to pre-April 2010 levels for decades."

*Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer

[ceile]

12. K&R!

Everyone needs to see this.

[sasha031]

13. k/r rec.

[AnneD]

14. BP...

got away with destroying a large area of the Gulf of Mexico.

[proverbialwisdom]

15. Video reposted at Google+ . See original link for detailed article. Where are U.S. MSM reports?

https://plus.google.com/105152337151893753994/posts/bBFWCDZffsv#105152337151893753994/posts/bBFWCDZffsv

VIDEO

Brian Gauspohl
11:30 AM - Public

US Gulf Coast seafood deformities and mutations alarm scientists

It's almost two years since BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, scientists say they have found deformities and mutations among seafood and a great decline in the numbers of marine life. Dahr Jamail reports from New Orleans.

Louisiana LA Mississippi MS Alabama AL

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241682318260912.html?utm_content=features&utm_campaign=features&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=rss&utm_medium=tweet

EXCERPT:

A direct link

Dr Andrew Whitehead, an associate professor of biology at Louisiana State University, co-authored the report 'Genomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes' that was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October 2011.

Whitehead's work is of critical importance, as it shows a direct link between BP's oil and the negative impacts on the Gulf's food web evidenced by studies on killifish before, during and after the oil disaster.

"What we found is a very clear, genome-wide signal, a very clear signal of exposure to the toxic components of oil that coincided with the timing and the locations of the oil," Whitehead told Al Jazeera during an interview in his lab.

According to Whitehead, the killifish is an important indicator species because they are the most abundant fish in the marshes, and are known to be the most important forage animal in their communities.

"That means that most of the large fish that we like to eat and that these are important fisheries for, actually feed on the killifish," he explained. "So if there were to be a big impact on those animals, then there would probably be a cascading effect throughout the food web. I can't think of a worse animal to knock out of the food chain than the killifish."

But we may well be witnessing the beginnings of this worst-case scenario.

Whitehead is predicting that there could be reproductive impacts on the fish, and since the killifish is a "keystone" species in the food web of the marsh, "Impacts on those species are more than likely going to propagate out and effect other species. What this shows is a very direct link from exposure to DWH oil and a clear biological effect. And a clear biological effect that could translate to population level long-term consequences."

[shireen]

17. thanks for posting

this needs to go viral in the US so the government starts feeling the pressure. This story is outrageous. If they're knowingly letting people eat contaminated food (myself included, because i've been trying to buy Gulf seafood whenever i see it at the supermarket to support Gulf communities), this is criminal.

[marshall gaines]

18. matter of time

just a matter of time before the Japanese disaster creates immense problems in the eco-chain, like dispersants ect in the gulf and then we'll see all the corporate execs along with their "slaves" jumping on space going vehicles and recolonizing Mars since it seems to have recovered somewhat from their past quest for power and profit there. Good luck human race and god protect us from these power, profit, greed driven monsters. Oh and don't forget this happened on the shrub and darths watch. great friends of corporate greed since one way or anther they got a kickback.

[a kennedy]

19. This is what I want to know....were is the media???

[KamaAina]

24. Springfield's on the Gulf Coast?

[Lone_Star_Dem]

25. Kpete, this article is a feature and not Latest Breaking News material.

I'm going to have to lock this but encourage you to post it elsewhere on DU. It's a great article.

Thanks.