Mother Jones takes a look at BP's Deep Secrets
Julia Whitty presents an in-depth look at the DeepWater Horizon disaster this week in Mother Jones. It’s a well-written primer on the worst oil spill in history and its tragic impact on the Gulf of Mexico. Whitty explains the complex biology of the Gulf and how BP has done just about everything wrong. Carl Safina, co-founder of the Blue Ocean Institute, tells Whitty that it’s unconscionable that BP continued to use the dispersant Corexit even after it was told to stop:
. . . untreated oil quickly rises to the surface, where it can be skimmed with relative ease. But treated with dispersant, it becomes a submerged plume, unlikely to ever float to the surface, and destined to migrate through underwater currents to the entire Gulf basin and eventually the North Atlantic. “Oil is toxic to most life,” says Steiner. “And Corexit is toxic to most life. But the most toxic of all is oil that’s been treated with Corexit. Plus, dispersants may well kill the ocean’s first line of defense against oil: the natural microbes that break oil down for other microbes to eat.”