20 May 2011

Things Learned from a Gulf of Mexico Science Conference

One

The preliminary results are in on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

There basically wasn't any hugely negative impact to wildlife in the immediate aftermath of last summer's oil spill. Some stuff died because the oil was toxic, but other stuff stepped right up because the oil was food. A lot of stuff that looked like it ought to be affected ... wasn't. The stuff that was knocked down recovered within a few months after they capped it. In short, some short-term changes in ecological composition occurred, but no overall increases or decreases of anything.

Also, commercially important fish had an outstanding year due to the lack of commercial fishing.

This is not to say that the Gulf ate the oil and is just fine now. Although there weren't immediate effects, the oil is still there and will likely have longer-term chronic effects. Some fisheries might not collapse until a couple years later, depending on how long the life cycles work for the seafood involved.

Two

The next time I find myself on the job market, all I really have to do is show up to a science conference and talk to people about what I can do with their CTD data. Voila, jobs will magically appear! Send out resumes? Phhht.

3 comments:

ashlayne said...

"There basically wasn't any hugely negative impact to wildlife in the immediate aftermath of last summer's oil spill."

So... in the short term, at least, the damage to the environment wasn't too terrible and irreparable? Yay for sensationalist media. >.<

Tom said...

So, you has mad skills, and you just need to show people them?

I can has pretty graph pics?

MWT said...

Considering how complicated the current script I'm working on is, I might end up posting some pretty pics when I'm done. ;)

Also, on the media coverage... it's going to be a lot harder to drum up public interest as time goes on, so in some ways it's a good thing that they were a bit sensationalist.