“The oil spill is going to change the direction of research at the lab more than anything that’s happened,” the marine biologist said. “So much is unpredictable and unprecedented. It makes you both sad and mad.”
I’m sure it’s gotten much worse by now,” Conley says. “One of the students told me she returned to a location with a different class where we had captured many fish and invertebrates a few weeks earlier but could find nothing alive.”
Conley wasn’t sure how much research they would be able to do, as each day the oil from the BP spill traveled closer and closer to the barrier islands that normally protect the shore.
The researchers and students sadly watched as the first tar deposits start to wash ashore from the emerald waters onto the white sand of Pensacola Beach, Florida during their June visit. “They were like little pancakes, these deposits of oil, all at the high-tide mark. They ran the length of the beaches,” he said. “They were small then. This was the first blush.”
“It was very unexpected to be down working in the gulf with all the oil, as I had planned to attend the summer course months before. So the oil naturally made me nervous that the class would be canceled and there would be nothing to study,” said Taylor A. Maningo, a senior biology major from Holtsville, N.Y. who came on the trip. Conley thought they might be able to assist in recovery efforts for wildlife, but found out they would have to have hazardous materials training to get near that much oil. “We tried to work around it and avoid the oil as much as we could, but it was impossible to avoid,” Conley said. “It’s one of those things that’s so big and hard to comprehend until you actually witness it. I know the students this semester are having a very different experience.” It was difficult initially to get science research vessels to the affected areas, but early findings already pointed to a dramatic impact on the Gulf’s marine life. Scientists at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory quickly found oil droplets in the larvae of crabs. Conley said the finding was devastating, as the oil will inevitably make its way up the food chain. Other species like whale sharks have already been spied congregating, feeding on plankton near an oil plume. Conley ticks off the species that are bound to be impacted— many of them already threatened: dolphins, whales, brown pelicans and the critically endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle. “The ecological impact is just unknown. Even after the oil is stopped, it’s still going to take a decade to clean up and break down. This kind of short-term damage has never been measured,” he said. ““It’s hard to call this a spill. It’s really a geyser of oil. It’s catastrophic.” Scientists and students aboard the USM research vessel Tommy Monroe were able to catch and analyze some large red snapper. The captain said the oil slick was supposed to reach that reef within two days. Now, Conley wonders if they will have been one of the last groups to be able to observe the reef before impact. He describes peering into a small bucket of water. “It’s hard to notice at first—it’s just a little sheen. You know how oil makes a rainbow in water? Like that.
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Compared to the petroleum gunk that was quickly cleared off the beaches, it will take much longer to clean up the millions of gallons of oil from one of the worst spills in history. Beyond the environmental havoc, Conley is also concerned about the economic toll the oil spill will have on residents. The area’s two biggest industries—fishing and tourism—have been hit hard so far. It feels like adding insult to injury for his friends who are still rebuilding their lives after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “We used the oil spill to our advantage to learn about what oil does to the marine ecosystems and marine environments such as estuaries, as well as to marine mammals and animals. We also learned how much the oil spill has affected workers in the shrimping and fishing businesses and how much of an impact it will have on their jobs and families,” said junior SUNY Potsdam student Katie L. Nawrot. “This experience has opened my eyes to what marine biology is all about.” It seems that now, and for years to come, Conley’s work with students will assist researchers in pinpointing the ongoing effects of the spill on the area’s marine life. It is a heartbreaking and unwelcome challenge for this professor and his students, who have a passion for the now-endangered marine environment that makes the Gulf Coast so unique.