BP+Oil+Spill

media type="custom" key="7052769"As a result of the BP oil spill, also known as the Deepwater Horizon spill, 200 million tons of crude oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill occurred as a result of machine and human errors, including both the manual and emergency blowout preventers failing to deploy. The effects of this much crude oil being released into the ocean were and still devastating for the environment and its inhabitants. The oil in the provides harmful conditions for every kind of creature from shark to fish, to shrimp, to plankton. May other types of animals have been effected by this, birds have been completed coated in oil making it difficult to ear impossible for them to fly. Seals have also been seen completely covered in oil, resulting in disability to feed and for seals to recognize their young as well as the occasionally baby drowning in the oil. The oil is also starting to wash up on nearby coastal wetlands. One of the most worrisome effects of the spill is not caused by the oil itself, but by the dispersants used in attempts to break up the spill. Nearly two million gallons of dispersant, containing solvents and surfactants have been used already. While effective enough in dispersing the oil, the problem is that it doesn’t reduce the toxicity; in fact it increases it which has begun what scientist fear to be a degradation of the ecosystem. The purpose of the dispersant is to reduce the oil to tiny droplet form so that it is easier for microbes to digest. However, what scientists fear is that these droplets of oil will stick to small animals such as plankton, and then animals that eat plankton will consume tainted plankton and this will continue up the food chain (Deepwater Horizon Spill: The Aftermath//)//.