U.S. Coast Guard
USA
On 20 April 2010 a fountain of oil, gas and drilling mud suddenly shot all the way up and out of the drill column, expanded onto the platform, and then ignited and exploded – the much-feared blowout.
a depth of 1,000 metres with a length of 35 kilometres. Animals and plants within the complex marine ecosystem along broad coastal stretches of the northern area of the Gulf of Mexico partly suffered huge damages, not only from the oil but often additionally as a result of the control measures. The attempt to burn off the oil film, for example, led to considerable air pollution in the region. Numerous people complained of breathing problems, sore eyes and headaches and some of the affected were taken to hospital. What impacts certain partly toxic components of the oil combustion residues and dispersants on fish and seafood organisms, sea birds, marine mammals and other living creatures have or whether they will accumulate in body tissue along the food chain is largely unclear and hardly predictable. Added to this are dam46
Eurofish Magazine 3 / 2011
ages caused by the mass use of large vehicles for transporting the oil slick and numerous voluntary helpers on the beaches and coasts. The American Bird Association reported that the oil cleanup crews had destroyed numerous nesting places of birds during their efforts to reduce the impact of the spill.
Tens of thousands of tests to track damages over time and space State authorities such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reacted to the looming environmental catastrophe with a host of measures. These ranged from the precautionary collection of 28,000 turtle eggs from along the beaches that were threatened
by oil to detailed records of the ecological damages for a “Natural Resource Damage Assessment”. Based on this document it should later on be possible to ascertain responsibilities and thereby process possible damage claims. In scrupulous and painstaking work hundreds of specialists and scientists collected a great amount of facts which together constitute a picture of occurrences over a wide area and a broad time span. At the beginning of 2011 the US government announced that the participating scientists alone had inspected nearly 6,500 km of the coast on foot and taken 35,000 photographs as proof. Over 40,000 samples of water, soil and tissue were analysed. One of the main tasks of all those involved, however, was to test the safety of seafood products from the affected area in order to be
able to rule out any health risks to consumers. When the full extent of the catastrophe became recognizable the NOAA closed the affected marine region for any kind of commercial and private fishing. That was on 2 May. Anyone infringing against the fishing ban was liable to a fine of 140,000 dollars or even withdrawal of their fishing licence. The initial zone of 17,650 km2 was gradually extended to 225,290 km2 by 21 June. This is equal to one third of US waters in the Gulf of Mexico or to an area the size of Great Britain. The fish industry was drawn deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of events. On 24 May 2010 the US government finally declared a state of emergency for the fisheries in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Based on cautious estimates losses suffered within the fishery run to 2.5 billion US dollars. They do not only result from losses within the commercial fishery (fishermen from the southern states landed 576,000 t of seafood with a landed value of 659 million USD in 2008) but also, and even more, from fishing sport. Every year more than 3.2 million hobby anglers go to the region to hunt tuna, marlin and red snapper. In 2008 they participated in 24 million fishing trips to the waters of the Gulf. These recreational fishermen leave a lot of money in the coastal towns because they need accommodation, they charter boats, buy food and make use of tourist attractions. The fishermen in the states affected by the oil (Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida) mainly catch shrimps, crabs and high-value fish species like grouper, red snapper, king mackerel, cobia, amberjack and yellowtail, with oyster production also being of considerable www.eurofishmagazine.com