Biologists fear Gulf wildlife will suffer for generations

[Barrett808]

Oiled birds may be cleaned up and beaches may be scrubbed, but the lingering affect of the poisonous gunk from the BP oil spill may be generations of wildife that is riddled with disease and deprived of food, Greenpeace researchers claim.

"We've all seen images of oiled birds and seeing the dolphins rising up through the oil, dead hermit crabs, things like that," said John Hocevar, a marine biologist and Greenpeace's oceans campaign manager. "For me the real concern is the long term impacts, the loss of habitat, the impacts on the whole food web. We're really looking at an entire ecosystem that's in real trouble." ...

The animals not killed outright by the oil spill, Hocevar said, will suffer "sub-lethal" effects on digestion, reproduction and other physiological systems for decades. As the most basic form of bottom feeders, such as plankton, die out, small fish and mammals above them will be forced to contend with a food source that is at once dwindling and diseased, perpetuating a vicious cycle, he said. ...

"What we've been seeing and hearing from BP and sometimes the government has often been very different from what independent scientists are saying."

Biologists fear Gulf wildlife will suffer for generations

[LisaL]

1. I fear the wild life will die if this goes on for long. But at least they won't have to suffer.

[hayu_lol]

2. Life for anything living in the Gulf, including humans who have...

been there for years, will ever be the same again. The changes will probably be permanent.

[Fumesucker]

3. There will be a more than adequate sufficiency of suffering..

Look at just the birds coated in tar and oil, they're suffering horribly..

[eowyn_of_rohan]

4. They are being burned alive in the oil fires

They are dying tortuous deaths due to the chemicals on and in their bodies

They are being smothered and choked to death by the oil

They are suffering unbearably

[blindpig]

5. What is happening to the Gulf is happening all over, at lesser....

scale. The Niger Delta, the Congo Basin, the fracking in this country, Amazonia, the Chaco....

We gotta kill Capitalism, it is killing the planet.

[Barrett808]

6. Oil spill in Gulf ‘making dolphins act drunk’

http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/06/oil-spill-in-gulf-making-dolphins-act.html