Truth and Consequences in the Gulf

By: Dr. Sylvia A. Earle | June 15, 2010 | Off the deepend

The following essay is an excerpt from the testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure given May 19, 2010 by Dr. Sylvia A. Earle, one of the world’s foremost oceanographers. The discourse you are about to read addresses the devastating impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Earle, who was profiled in the February/March issue of Malibu Magazine, was scheduled to write a Blue Issue feature about her award-winning proposal to establish a global network of marine protected areas, but due to the BP oil spill, Earle thought it more appropriate to publish her address to Congress in the hopes that our readers will get a perspicuous understanding of the spill’s environmental impact and what can be done to prevent catastrophic events like this from happening in the future.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on behalf of the ocean and for people now and in the future who will be affected by the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. That includes just about everyone on the planet, one way or another.

For more than 50 years, I have had experience on, around, above and under the Gulf of Mexico as a marine scientist and explorer, founded and led engineering companies devoted to development of equipment for access to the deep sea, served as a member of various corporate and dozens of non-profit boards and as a member of numerous state, federal and international committees concerning ocean policy.

From 1990 to 1992, I was the chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency with up close and personal experience with the Exxon Valdez and Megaborg oil spills, as well as extensive involvement with evaluation of the environmental consequences of the 1990 – 1991 Persian Gulf spill. …

You have seen plenty of bad news images relating to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. I want to illustrate here that the Gulf of Mexico is not, as some believe, an industrial wasteland, valuable primarily as a source of petrochemicals and a few species of ocean wildlife that humans exploit for food, commodities and recreational fishing. These are assets worth protecting as if our lives depend on them, because in no small measure, they do.

In 2009, Volume I of the eight-volume series on the Gulf of Mexico Origin, Waters and Biota lists 15,419 species within 40 phyla — embracing most of the large categories of life on Earth — and was covered in 79 chapters by 140 authors from 80 institutions in 15 countries. The idea for this was hatched by Drs. Wes Tunnell, Daryl Felder and myself during a conversation at the Harte Research Institute in Corpus Christi in 2001 while reflecting on the need to update the 1954 Fishery Bulletin 89, a classic reference that provides a benchmark concerning the biological, physical, chemical, meterological and economic aspects of the Gulf.

Biological data from the new series will appear electronically on the Web in Gulfbase and OBIS — the Ocean Biogeographic Information System, an online, open-access, globally distributed network of systematic, ecological, and environmental data established in 1999 by the 10-year Census of Marinelife project. The Gulf of Mexico figures prominently in this year’s celebration of Biodiversity of Life on Earth.

The Gulf of Mexico is a living laboratory, America’s Mediterranean, a tri-national treasure better known for yielding hurricanes, petrochemicals, shrimp and, in recent years, notorious “dead zones,” than for its vital role in generating oxygen, taking and holding carbon, distributing nutrients, stabilizing temperature, yielding freshwater to the skies that returns as rain — contributing to the ocean’s planetary role as Earth’s life-support system. As with the ocean as a whole, the most important values we derive from the Gulf of Mexico are those we take for granted. We have, because at one time, we could. But that is no longer true. We now understand there are limits to what we can put into or take out of this or any other part of the ocean without unfavorable consequences — back to us.

It once seemed that — as with the ocean as a whole — the Gulf was so big, so vast, so resilient, that nothing we could do could harm it. The benefits we believed would always be there, no matter how large the trawls, how long the nets, how numerous the hooks for catching ocean wildlife — or how many, how long or how deep the pipelines, drilling operations, seismic surveys or production rigs.

While yielding to the pressure to extract golden eggs from the golden Gulf, we have failed to take care of the Gulf itself. Destructive fishing pressure has depleted sharks, tunas, menhaden, groupers, snappers, tarpon, turtles, shrimp, crabs, lobsters. More than 80 percent of some species have been extracted in 50 years, and more than 90 percent of the sharks, swordfish, marlin and most grouper species. Fewer than 10 percent of the bluefin tunas remain, and all of the monk seals that once abounded as far north as Galveston have been exterminated. …

The main excuse for killing seals and whales was for the extraction of oil to provide heat and light to enhance human societies. The shift to fossil fuels may have saved the whales and seals, but now we are killing mountains and downstream rivers and the sea beyond to extract coal. Excess carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels — coal, oil, gas — is warming the planet and acidifying the ocean. …