Thread: BP Oil Spill

This year I'm starting to see how the BP oils spill has effected us these last 2 seasons has sucked there hasn't really been any awesome days on the pier I have seen acres of dead sargassum grass and sores all over the fish . do y'all think the BP oil spill has ruined the fishing just wanting yalls opinion

I don't know if it was the oil or the dispersant, but I have seen reports that there are higher numbers of malformities in young tuna the last few years, so I do not doubt that it has had some effect.

Nature will heal, though. I expect that the enormous tonnage of forage fish that is taken out of the Gulf has a greater effect.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/environ...erjack/2171684

I think you may be reading too much 'propaganda' ;-)

The crap we let runoff from our yards, streets, fields and down our drains is exponentially greater than all the offshore oil spills combined.

Originally Posted by DRH

The crap we let runoff from our yards, streets, fields and down our drains is exponentially greater than all the offshore oil spills combined.

I agree with you on this one. Not to mention #r made a strong point on another thread when he said this was one of the coldest winters on record followed by one of the wettest springs on record. If it had to do anything with Deepwater Horizon it would probably be the aftermath from all the dispersants. But then again, the Gulf of Mexico is a vast body of water, the dispersants they dropped being that is was very toxic, was just a "drop in the bucket".

Wait til a good rain. If you happen to be in a parking lot, watch the drain. Look at all that oil sheen runoff from vehicles. I'm all for American farmers/farming, heck my dad works in the ag industry, but some of the stuff they sell is pretty much poison to aquatic life when it runs off into creeks in rivers. Its not intentional, but after a lot of rain, it just happens. I dislike BP as much as anyone for the carelessness of their rig but the big picture here is we do a lot more damage environmentally than the oil spill has.

Well just my opinion. I know for a fact that the shrimping in local coastal waters, crabbing and my hobby floundering has seen its worse numbers since the spill. Talked to alot of folks that commercial fish these species and they can't remember worse seasons. All of these spawn on the bottom and thats exactly where the dispersant and oil has wound up. The number of baby flounder I'm seeing compared to years past has drastically declined. Makes me wonder????

Originally Posted by bamafan611

All of these spawn on the bottom and thats exactly where the dispersant and oil has wound up.

The only problem with this statement is that, the bottom where these species spawn and the bottom where the oil and dispersant supposedly settled are two different places

Originally Posted by bamafan611

Well just my opinion. I know for a fact that the shrimping in local coastal waters, crabbing and my hobby floundering has seen its worse numbers since the spill. Talked to alot of folks that commercial fish these species and they can't remember worse seasons. All of these spawn on the bottom and thats exactly where the dispersant and oil has wound up. The number of baby flounder I'm seeing compared to years past has drastically declined. Makes me wonder????

Keep wondering...
I can't imagine a relatively short-lived event (at least in our part of the world) directly causing all this when the (floating) oil (and even more so) dispersants were relatively quickly broken down by environmental and biological factors.
Deep water effects are still only dimly studied and understood as are the life cycles and effects the spill had on these (or many other) species.
To assume this event is the sole cause of the (perceived) current down cycle of crab and flounder populations is a stretch (at best).
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/27/us/gul...hing-industry/

There is some good news: Some studies indicate that commercial fish species in different parts of the Gulf escaped the worst. Recent research at Alabama's Dauphin Island Sea Lab found that young shrimp and blue crabs off Bayou La Batre, the state's major seafood port, showed no sign of decline since the spill.

WOW!

Yesterday I ate a mound of fresh crabs with my sister & BIL caught at their house on a private bay on DI.
Their statement was they have caught more crabs this year from their dock than ANY year since they bought the house (over 15 years).
Yet the commercial crabbers outside their little bay are having a hard year. Hmmmm
Perhaps counting* the number of commercial crab pots in Mobile Bay and surrounding waters might shed a little... (* uhh, not possible)

Also commercial gigging has bloomed since the adoption of the 10 flounder creel.
Just try to catch a flounder near Little Lagoon Pass during the 'fall run' nowadays.

All this pressure coupled with the environmental stress of the past two years are the most likely culprits IMHO.

This doesn't mean I believe (indirect) effects of the spill (and cleanup efforts) are not possible, simply that ALL factors should be considered before jumping to unsubstantiated conclusions.
There are a TON of studies and consequent news releases which still cannot say definitively what the effects of the spill really are on specific species (or groups of species) except in a few cases.
BP oil spill dispersants may have hurt Gulf of Mexico food chain, study finds | NOLA.com

In fact some studies have shown just the opposite (that most finfish and other vertebrates had little or no problem dealing with the spill).
http://dhp.disl.org/PDFs/Oil%20Spill...20Seatrout.pdf

Still it may be many more years before we fully understand those effects and consequences.

Thanks for the feedbacks just wanted yalls opinions and there are a lot more I can say that's been effected in the gulf

Fishing is only slow (and late) due to delayed water temperatures rising to necessary levels for bait fish spawning migrations--they are stopping just shy of our waters as a result--we are still getting the trickling outskirts though. The sardines, anchovies, menhaden, pilchards, etc., are not going to spawn where their future generation may fail to thrive. The big fish will be concentrated where the food is.

Additionally, recent studies have shown that bait fish populations are booming right now due to lack of enough predators to eat them ("slightly" in part from over fishing, and lessened demand/pressure from commercial industry). With that said, fishing in general will be ever so slightly influenced as a result of some larger fish having plenty to eat and less likely to notice YOUR bait in the water. Without going into a long winded book report, in short, the harmony between bait, zooplankton, phytoplankton, etc has been challenged and the end result is lowered oxygen levels and stress in certain areas. THAT is in part (and I mean a tiny part) why you'll see some large die offs, physical stress signs and clusters of algae in banks--having zero to do with the BP oil spill and everything to do with nature rebalancing itself after fluctuations in specie populations/fluctuations.

BP oil spill killed some creatures, yes, but to think they are responsible for slow fishing, crabbing and shrimping is merely lack of understanding of how our marine ecology operates as a whole. Other great and valid points have been made here, but allow me to put it into perspective for the audience.

The Gulf of Mexico (actually called the Mediterranean of the Americas) is one of the smaller bodies of saltwater on our planet, ranking only 9th in the world, and would be lower if the river systems were not counted as part of it.

That said, the body of the Gulf itself contains 660 quadrillion gallons of water on an average day.

The BP oil spill dumped 200 million gallons of oil into this body of water.

Now, here is the real math for all of those drop on the bucket people (you need a REALLY BIG BUCKET)! More like a part of a "water molecule" to a bucket.

That means as a body of water, the gulf was affected by 0.000000000000000033% trace elements of oil per gallon (yes that is the REAL deal and a real number). This doesn't even count the Gulf Stream, tides and currents.

Now considering that the Gulf Stream carries our currents also into the Atlantic Ocean, as well as into the northern and southern hemispheric (much larger) bodies of water, you can just let your imagination run wild with how little BPs accident actually affected our waters.

You have a better chance absorbing toxins through the skin on your calloused hands from handling a butterfly whose caterpillar form ate a tomato plant leaf in a raised garden bed with treated lumber seeping traces of arsenic into the soil from 2 feet away prior to pupating, than you have of seeing a lasting effect of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico affecting wildlife populations as a whole.

Don't believe ANY of the propagandist bull malarkey. Find a seasoned biologist who is unbiased against BP, and open up a discussion.

If anything, BP did more harm using the dispersal agent they used to break down the oil than the actual oil itself.