Rare sawfish could be spill casualty (FL)

[jpak]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37455934/ns/us_news-environment/

The massive oil slick that is spreading throughout the waters of the Gulf of Mexico threatens the existence of a critically endangered sawfish, as well as other already threatened species that dwell there, scientists say.

Louisiana's state bird is among the species that could take a hit from the oil.

"You don't have to be a marine biologist to know that the Gulf oil spill is an environmental disaster of the first order," said Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of the FASEB Journal, published by the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology.

The largetooth sawfish, a popular curio item known for its sawlike snout, was proposed as a federally endangered species on May 7, less than three weeks after massive amounts of oil started gushing into Gulf waters, said George Burgess, an ichthyologist and sawfish expert at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

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