New Batfish Species Found Under Gulf Oil Spill 226
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."
They don't walk any more (Score:4, Funny)
They kind of glide across the surface now.
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The only reason we were able to spot them is because they were slipping on the oil so they couldn't run away and hide.
Thank you BP.
Correlation v. Causation (Score:4, Funny)
They're ugly, look crippled, and found in only one place in the world -- an oil spill.
Gentlemen, to your conspiracies!
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You haven't see cute until you have seen an Alterian cuddling a rotting, oil-covered pelican corpse like a teddy bear.
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It's true. There are a lot of BP Execs involved ~rimshot
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And the old saw applies here (Score:5, Funny)
What's the difference between a pancake batfish and Tony Hayward?
One's a scum-sucking bottom-feeder, and the other's a fish.
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Re:And the old saw applies here (Score:5, Insightful)
This, here, is the problem with capitalism.
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Among one of the many problems.
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Except that is orthogonal to capitalism. You can have capitalism without the limited liability of corporations and with laws that punish executives for their actions. And you can have executives with no personal responsibility without capitalism, though you would probably call them something else.
Re:And the old saw applies here (Score:4, Informative)
Couldn't the limited liability of a corporation be insurance sold by banks, instead of as a cost implicitly underwritten by society?
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Re:And the old saw applies here (Score:4, Informative)
No, it has *nothing* to do with capitalism. There are socialist, communist, and any other economic system around that doesn't hold business owners responsible for what their employees do and there are capitalistic ones that do. Even in full command type economies there *has* to be some type of concentration of wealth or power - you at the least have the govt chairmanships that direct policy for the state run factories (and try and hold them responsible - I expect you will get BP execs held responsible, win the lottery, and discover an immortality potion before you get a govt agency to decide to hold itself responsible for its own actions). If you want economies of scale to kick in - and I assure you that you do - then the question isn't if something like BP will exist it is who has control of it. A little mom & pop isn't going to run an offshore deep water oil rig no matter what and industry of that scale exists in nearly every sector (a small local team isn't going to produce whatever the current generation of Intel chips is when someone reads this - or whatever company is currently on top of the world market).
What this is a failure of is a failure of our government. We have regulations in place that would have (maybe - can't truly see alternate time lines but this type of thing is *not* unknown and we can trace the chain of failures) prevented it from being a true disaster. They were ignored from every level you can point at and in many cases still are 70+ days later (not sure the current count) - nor can you pin it on any political group (more than just our two main ones involved too) or any specific president (Obama failed miserably on initial reaction and on his now long term response - Obama has made Bush with Katrina look highly competent).
The problem is that as we get to where in order to advance you have to have not just multi-billion but *multi-trillion* dollar budgets for some advances then there is just so much money/power floating around that it draws corruption to a point that I can't really come up with a good analogy. Given the corruption we have seen with our own regulators (with drugs and prostitutes) and the ineptitude of all levels of govt to respond to this what would a command market have done better? Indeed, the fact that this is hurting their stock and end user sales has done more to spur them than *anything* the govt has done or will ever do. They aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them and look to how whom they donate too, whom is in power, and whom gets elected correlates to see how buyable most politicians are.
While we can certainly point to fairly socialistic countries that do things Right - say the Dutch - it isn't because they are tending socialistic. Indeed, a stronger govt presence and control would have been *worse* in our case - as bad as BP has done our govt has done worse (and I say that is true for the last few decades too, and that is *all* branches of the govt). I can also point to China and the old Soviets for examples of more socialistic countries that are as bad or worse than us. It is more rot at our core and that rot stems more from our concentration of wealth. That concentration of wealth is not so much from being capitalistic as much as it from necessity. While the Dutch have chosen their niche to be world expert on even there they have a concentration of wealth that will most likely one day rot. For world super powers (while we do not list China as one today it is almost there) you are going to have several. The Dutch aren't going to have globally competitive space exploration, deep sea exploration, energy research, computing research, and pretty much globally competitive (say top five) in hundreds of fields. There are only a few countries with the wealth (and by that I mean raw resources) and they *all* suffer (or in the case of the old soviets used too) from the same thing.
In the end I personally think it is more that human nature is such that we will have trouble progressing past a certain point - or at least it is going to be a l
Re:And the old saw applies here (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
He also produced some of the most incredible PR gaffes in recent memory. It's easy to hate someone when they're wholly unlikeable.
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And today, I have no points to give. Damn.
That is EXACTLY the correct call on this one. As a leader, one can, and should, instill both fiscal AND safety responsibility.
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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.
Like that makes him an exception among his peers. You could say the same of the vast majority of CEO's out there. Luckily only a small number of these silver spoon fuckwits can cause disasters of this magnitude though.
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Unfortunately the mob only descends when the target is already on its knees.
The public pushes companies to make extreme profits and turn a blind eye to their methods until something goes wrong.
Im sure all the critics will keep using those oil derived products in your everyday life whilst maintaining outrage about the methods that where used to generate said products.
Its all a game to blame someone else.
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The public pushes companies to make extreme profits and turn a blind eye to their methods until something goes wrong.
The public ? Most people I talk to don't mind companies turning a healthy profit as long as it isn't an exorbitant one earned on the back of workers or by cutting corners but I've yet to hear people push companies to make ever more profits. When you do hear analysts push for ever increasing profits it's usually attributed to some vague entity like "the market" or "investors" which are code for the wealthy few as far as I'm concerned.
You're right about the consumer hypocrisy though.
Re:And the old saw applies here (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Bullshit!
Drilling in shallower water is done all the time, but costs money in loss of tourism and only works if that reservoir is not already tapped. No one cares how politically incorrect something is if it makes money.
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Natural seeps are not all in one place. How much is BP paying you to post this drivel?
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In some states it looks like, and only after they had already proven they could not do this safely or responsibly. Let me shed a tear for the poor oil companies.
Re:And the old saw applies here (Score:5, Informative)
I followed the timeline and they already had like 5 different things to try within days of it happening.
That is just plain untrue.
April 22 - The Deepwater Horizon rig, valued at more than $560 million, sinks and a 5-mile-long (8 km) oil slick forms.
April 25 - Efforts to activate the well's blowout preventer fail. [It took them THREE DAYS to realize they had completely forgotten to maintain the main component intended to prevent the blowout]
May 7 - An attempt to place a containment dome over the spewing well fails when the device is rendered useless by frozen hydrocarbons that clogged it [this was not days later, it was over TWO WEEKS LATER]
May 16 - BP inserts a tube into the leaking riser pile of the well and captures some oil and gas.
May 26 - A "top kill" maneuver starts, involving pumping heavy fluids and other material into the well shaft to try to stifle the flow. [Already over a month later!]
June 2 - BP tries another capping strategy but has difficulty cutting off a leaking riser pipe. [etc]
So "within days" they had done one thing, which is to try to manually activate a device that didn't automatically activate because it "had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a "useless" test version of a key component and a cutting tool that wasn't strong enough to shear through steel joints in the well pipe and stop the flow of oil.".
Wow, yeah, sounds like they sure spent big bucks on R&D and maintenance there...
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April 25 - Efforts to activate the well's blowout preventer fail. [It took them THREE DAYS to realize they had completely forgotten to maintain the main component intended to prevent the blowout]
Following the story the BOP had been previously modified, and the drawings were incorrect on top of the lack of maintenance. The crew attempting to operate the BOP were a different crew than those who ran the rig, from a different company as those who modified the BOP, and I guarantee you didn't know the history of maintenance on the device.
Spending three days trying to figure out something may seem like incompetence to you, but quite frankly you are not the one there. I work as a maintenance engineer wi
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I don't believe I criticized anyone in particular, but BP and the overall mismanagement and incompetence of the situation.
Large corporations have many employees, of course. Not all of them made mistakes or share any blame in a fiasco like this. Sometimes you can't even blame the corporation or its management, since the mistake was the fault of individuals acting alone.
But who's fault is it that the crew trying to repair the BOP did not exchange proper information with those knowlegable about its installat
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No, I was replying to the OP's comment (which I even quoted in my post!)
"I followed the timeline and they already had like 5 different things to try within days of it happening".
"Pre-made" domes or whatnot has nothing to do with disputing that statment.
Do you even READ THE ORIGINAL POST or do you just get irate and post on emotion?
Re:And the old saw applies here (Score:4, Insightful)
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...)
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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 rehash
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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.
Yeah, it's so much safer that the last major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico [wikipedia.org] was in 50 meters of water and took 10 months to stop.
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Except they used the same tactics to solve this leak so that seems pretty false.
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I got the distinct impression that Ol' Tony didn't give a damn about us "little people" and his biggest issue with the oil spill was that it was keeping him from "getting his life back".
Re:And the old saw applies here (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, you mean all the same things they tried with Ixtoc I, 30 years ago, which also didn't work then?
Yeah, that's some real R&D there. Well done.
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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.
The same measures [youtube.com] they took in 1979 when an oil rig exploded in the gulf. Let's face it 30 years of technological progress and they have done nothing to stem the negative effects of their actions.
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Very little, if anything. 5 different ideas within days? If they didn't work then [youtube.com] why would anyone think they would work now?
Yes the same company had the same problem and tried all the same ideas 30 years ago, in shallow water. Forced them to drill? lol *twisting*arm*
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No, that is not true Capitalism, that is greed and bungled regulation. Capitalism is not greed, and greed is not capitalism. I am AC above you, and I fully agree in terms of government culpability. But if you want to know where the blame against Halliburton is, you must have missed the kangaroo court, Stalinist commission hearings at the outset of the whole mess, where it was like watching the Three Stooges (Oceanic, BP, and Halliburton) in front of what amounts to a show trial. Probably because so much
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also the american (and eu) people for demanding oil knowing full well that a certain percentage of the oil will leak into the environment.
boohoo there was a big well that blew up. boohoo you got to drive to work every day for the last YOUR WHOLE LIFE?
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They didn't. They called him a name which while perhaps harsh, isn't defamatory. You're being unfair comparing the two.
What he did or didn't do may be a matter of perspective considering public opinion could matter a lot in this case.
You could sit in the crowd which holds that corporate executives should not be liable for anything, that there's nothing wrong with acting solely in the interest of shareholders or golden parachutes. That sounds like you.
Or you could be one of the people who expect the chief
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I mean seriously, what did this guy do or fail to do?
He needs to take his head out of his ass.
How about playing golf on the weekend when he needs his life back?
Playing sailor boy on a yacht while fishers on the Gulf are stranded . . . just adds insult to injury.
Someone with his level of pay should know better. I need that on my resume "Hey, I destroyed 2 Billion $ in wealth during my leadership of the company . . ."
Or he is just an arrogant, royal fucking dickhead.
Where's my Roger Mellies' Profanisourus when I need some utterly vulgar English curse word
Tony Hayward is a pedophile? (Score:2)
Oh, so he's a pedophile? I knew it! Has he denied it? No? Then it must be true.
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I heard they took turns doing that, they still have not denied this either.
noscript users... (Score:2, Informative)
wondering where the pictures is...
http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/full/2010/07/08/13866-batfish.jpg [ibtimes.com]
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Wow, they really were cool looking.
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Obviously you haven't been listening to the blue whales themselves [theonion.com]
Well they did live there (Score:3, Interesting)
What are the odds we found out more about them just as they get wipped out?
How is BP going to fix this?
Re:Well they did live there (Score:5, Funny)
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Gosh, perhaps the dozens of robots with bright lights and cameras scouring the seabed looking for a broken oil pipe can also spot fish? This is no coincidence. There's hundreds of unique species per square mile of ocean.
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So maybe we should be a little more careful?
If we started demanding relief wells were in place before any production could begin then we could make sure these leaks do not last for months.
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I said more careful not accepting of no risk at all. Typical AC response, so senseless that you refuse to even attach an account to it.
Further more the relief well would not be finished enough to have a blow out, you might wish to educate yourself a little about how they work.
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Simple, they'll erase any record of them.
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Suck it Blue!
Odds are (Score:2)
they live below the threatened areas. Seeing that they are bottom feeders and the oil is not settling, I would say that science scored one in the middle of a disaster.
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Sure, they live on the ocean floor and oil floats, but what do you reckon the chances are that there is a significant amount of water-soluble toxins leaching from that leak? Pretty good chance would be my guess. Oh, and what do these batfish feed on? That's right - the remains of critters poisoned by the oilslick above them.
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New (Soon to be Extinct) Species Found... (Score:5, Funny)
There, fixed that for you...
mod (Score:2)
Mod parent +1, Tragic.
and (Score:2)
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on the subject of new species in the gulf (Score:2)
FTA: (Score:2, Insightful)
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:FTA: (Score:5, Informative)
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I would have thought a British Petroleum gallon was about 4.53 Litres
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Too bad, some countries also use squat toilets should that mean that when I say toilet I need to specify a civilized flush one?
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I question the validity of any site that thinks gallons and liters are interchangable
I question the validity of YOUR FACE!
Re:FTA: (Score:5, Informative)
You would prefer, then, that the article said "The well has pumped millions of gallons (3,785,411.78's of liters) of oil into the Gulf"? Perhaps a review of the concept of False Precision [wikipedia.org] is in order. "A guard at a museum says a dinosaur skeleton is 70 million and six years old. He reasons that it was 70 million years old when he started working there six years ago."
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That and if there are more than 2.6million gallons then the correct explaination would have been "The well has pumped millions of
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Well, liters and gallons are interchangable [google.ca]. I think you mean they aren't directly comparable because one is almost 4x the other. But it's not an order of magnitude (x10) difference, so I think they can be partially forgiven.
For their partial punishment, they will have to pay the $/gallon price for their liters of gasoline. :-)
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To help clarify some of the issues with that statement others have pointed out:
You need to keep in mind the idea of digits of precision. Were I to say "My swimming pool contains one thousand gallons of water" I have given you one digit of precision - you can legitimately say my pool contains four thousand liters of water, because you are still in one digit of precision. You CANNOT legitimately say my pool contains 3785 liters - you just pulled 3 more digits of precision out of the air.
If I say "there are mi
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You have a very small swimming pool.
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They are, either for very small gallons or for very large liters.
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Imperial liters, perhaps.
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I question the validity of any site that thinks gallons and liters are interchangable
I'm about to nitpick, but....
Both of these statements are true: "The well has pumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf". "The well has pumped millions of liters of oil into the Gulf".
They are comparable if we're talking order of magnitude. I know 3.79 != 1, but when we're talking about "millions of" in a vague sense where nobody really knows what's going on, the real difference is between 10^6, 10^7, or 10^8. M*10^
Spokesman for BP (Score:2)
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the disbursants being injected into the water
If BP were being that free with its disbursing, people might be rather less upset.
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I guess the oil fumes are getting to me!
And now BP will take the credit for the discovery (Score:2)
Clean them (Score:5, Funny)
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Quick Robin! The Batfish Repellent!
Wait for it ... (Score:2)
Obligatory (Score:2)
Distinguishing feature (Score:2)
They are distinguished from other species of batfish by their oiliness.
Re:Batfish? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmmm.....how do they taste, breaded and fried?
Oily.
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At least you do not need additional oil to fry them.
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"That's a joke that only the Slashdot crowd would and if you tell it at a party, a party that has cute girls. Nah, that won't happen."
Fixed that for you.
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I prefer them Battered
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This was news like 2-3 weeks ago
Your observation, however, hasn't been relevant at any point in history.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Until the oil eating bacteria remove all the oxygen those fish need. Also oil with dispersant in it does not float to the top.
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Also oil with dispersant in it does not float to the top.
In Russia it does.
And they will really appreciate the poison rain (Score:3, Informative)
As an entire ecosystem dies above them, the residues, acids, and by-products of decomposition will settle to the bottom. Plus they probably wont miss all that pesky oxygen that can no longer dissolve into the water.
Animals can become susceptible to disease from changes in any number of factors. Temperature, pH, etc.
Plus, do you think the material coming out of the ground is in any way uniform in composition or will remain together? Or is different stuff, metals, chemicals, acids, poisons and whatever
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If BP would not have caved and paid off the fishing and tourist industry, then many problems would go away. Again, if there were fewer hotels, and few more careful fishing crews, turtles might survive. As it is, the oil is j
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Pass the oil repellent bat-spray.
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