New Batfish Species Found Under Gulf Oil Spill

eDarwin writes "Researchers have discovered two previously unknown species of bottom-dwelling fish in the Gulf of Mexico, living right in the area affected by the BP oil spill. Researchers identified new species of pancake batfishes, a flat fish rarely seen because of the dark depths they favor. They are named for the clumsy way they 'walk' along the sea bottom, like a bat crawling."

FTA:

[butterflysrage]

The well has pumped millions of gallons (liters) of oil into the Gulf

uh... one of those things is not like the other... I question the validity of any site that thinks gallons and liters are interchangable

Re:And the old saw applies here

[Haffner]

I'm inclined to agree; while he is responsible for the pressure that eventually trickled down the management chain resulting in the cost-cutting measures leading to the spill, he bears no personal responsibility. That lies with the management in charge of the well.

Re:And the old saw applies here

[Sponge Bath]

I mean seriously, what did this guy do or fail to do?

Lead and instill a culture of safety and accountability in a company with a history of dangerous cost cutting.

Re:And the old saw applies here

[mswhippingboy]

what did this guy do or fail to do?

How about spending a tiny bit of the $5.5B in profits each quarter on R&D for oil spill containment and cleanup? I guess that would have been too much to ask.

Re:And the old saw applies here

[Bryansix]

Are you saying then spent none? Becuase I followed the timeline and they already had like 5 different things to try within days of it happening. The problem is they should not have been forced to drill so deeply in the first place. Drilling in shallower water is MUCH safer although more politically incorrect.

Re:And the old saw applies here

[RSCruiser]

Of course drilling in shallower water is safer. The problem is we've already exhausted a large number of those reserves, forcing deep water drilling.

The reason they had 5 different things to try so quickly is because they were all tried way back during the Ixtoc spill. The ideas weren't new. The problems arise when you consider they're now under a mile of water instead of a few hundred feet.

Its a fairly safe assumption that BP (and other companies) have spent nothing on containment research given the rehashing of Ixtoc containment and the on-the-fly engineering that has happened since the spill started.

Re:And the old saw applies here

[ultranova]

while he is responsible for the pressure that eventually trickled down the management chain resulting in the cost-cutting measures leading to the spill, he bears no personal responsibility

This, here, is the problem with capitalism.

This is why I dislike archaic units of measure

[Anonymous Coward]

millions of gallons (3,785,411.78's of liters)

BP is british. Shouldn't that be "millions of gallons (4,546,091.88's of litres)"?

You Americans and your wacky mini-gallon.

Re:Odds are

[hedwards]

Umm, you do know what it is that bottom feeders feed upon, right?

Re:Won't be the only "new" species discovery

[Bryansix]

Yes, because they wanted the rig to explode and sink into the sea.

Re:FTA:

[thegarbz]

I think we'd just prefer if stupid journalists didn't think that just because there are people outside America they don't realise that a gallon is a unit of measure for a liquid. I mean Americans make it their life long mission to shout at the top of their voices about how great their imperial system is so why even bother telling people there's such a thing as a litre at all.

That and if there are more than 2.6million gallons then the correct explaination would have been "The well has pumped millions of gallons (tens of millions of liters) of oil into the Gulf" Unless the journalist was being intentionally tricky and trying to show the number was between 1million gallons and 2.6million and my head really hurts.

Re:Correlation v. Causation

[pookemon]

Yes - however given the size of the oil spill - everything is now found where an oil spill is.

Re:Correlation v. Causation

[AngryK9]

Except the technology to stop the spill.

Re:And the old saw applies here

[Dahamma]

5 attempts, no matter how "massive", that fail miserably is in no way impressive to me. No points for effort here, this isn't Kindergarten.

And becomes even less impressive when the ridiculous estimates of 2000-5000 barrels per day leaking were later updated to 60,000-100,000 bpd (and those were really only changed when the majority of non-partisan scientists examining the data pointed out how ridiculous they were... so believe the new "official" estimate with a grain of salt...)

Re:Hmmm

[PsychoSlashDot]

This was news like 2-3 weeks ago

You know what? That fact has absolutely no importance and never has. Let's see why.

First, there are two types of news: things that are interesting and things that are important. Things that are important threaten my life or my lifestyle, or those around me. I need to react, and react quickly. This story isn't in that category, and most of what's posted on Slashdot aren't. I don't come here for urgent breaking-news issues, and I shouldn't. On the other hand, things that are interesting generally remain interesting for more than a few moments. The discovery of a new (and interesting) species of fish is an interesting bit of trivia that won't be any less interesting if I read about it today, tomorrow, or a month from now. It's timeless news.

Secondly, it's very hard for the administrators to know how many readers have heard about a particular story yet. They filter through submissions and make decisions based on how interesting a story is. Thing is... I hadn't heard about this anywhere else in the last two to three weeks. If Slashdot hadn't accepted this submission and posted it, I wouldn't have heard about it. Which says that at least in this case - in my case - this acceptance worked exactly as desired. If you already heard about this, feel free to ignore the story.

Third and finally, you imply that because this news isn't 0-day it's not news. What's the threshold? 0-day? 0-minute? Who are you to decide when information is no longer "fresh" enough to merit further dissemination. I'll agree that posting a story announcing the exciting new 80486 processor would be inappropriate but you're quibbling about a few weeks in a story about a new-to-us species of fish.

You should have tried to make a fished p0st instead of complaining about this.