ON THE WATERFRONTON THEWATERFRONT
Sea fan Callogorgia gracilis with the brittle star Asteroschema p. in its typical outstretched form clinging to coral branches.
Continued It wasn’t until recently that we were allowed within a 15- mile zone of that area. Tere was one ship here and scientist Dr. Charles Fisher from the University of Pennsylvania was allowed within that 5-12 mile zone. So there are not a lot of scientists out there ac- tively sampling now. Tere is not a large amount of money available to be sponsoring scientists at this mo- ment. A small amount of money was available to each state. A larger amount is supposed to be available this year for the next 10 years. Tat’s why I say we won’t know the extent for probably a decade.
GD:Tere have been research ships out there. Who’s operating them? Tere’s been some reporting of the conditions. DV: Yes, there have been a few uni- versity vessels. I believe the Univer- sity of Miami’s vessel has been out there. Te University of South Florida has had a research vessel out there. NOAA has had a re- search vessel out there with a few investigators from other areas. Tat’s what you’re reading in the news. Tere are still pockets of oil and impact from oils in the mid- water column as well as down at the bottom. Tere are signs found
by the NOAA crews with Dr. Fis- cher showing dead and dying deep- water corals within miles of the well.
GD: If there was something simi- lar to the Deepwater Horizon with the use of dispersants, what was discovered? DV:Tere has been a major con- cern about dispersants and some environmental tests done on dis- persants. However, most of those tests are looking at the impact on fish, as well as maybe shellfish such as a crustacean, shrimp or oyster, and maybe most use the early ten- der larval stages or young shrimp or fish larvae because that’s usually the most impact will be shown on the young ones as they develop. We did a test on the dispersant that was used by BP and regret- fully they did not do any work on corals. So we were very interested in seeing the impact that it may of had on coral larvae and coral re- production or the settlement of new corals on the bottom. And to some very surprising results, as was told previously by BP, the disper- sant had a very short toxicity level and would be broken down. What we found was that after mixing oil and water for 72 hours, then doing a 72-hour additional test, after five
14 KONK Life
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