After big 1979 spill, a stunning recovery

We need hope, while we are all stressing over the gulf situation we must keep hope alive.

www.newsobserver.com...=misearch

For Tunnell and others involved in the fight to contain the June 3, 1979, spill from Mexico's Ixtoc 1 offshore well in the Gulf of Campeche, the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico conjures an eerie sense of déjà vu.

Like the BP spill, the Ixtoc disaster began with a burst of gas followed by an explosion and fire, followed by a relentless gush of oil that resisted all attempts to block it. Plugs of mud and debris, chemical dispersants, booms skimming the surface of the water: Mexico's Pemex oil company tried them all, but still the spill inexorably crept ashore, first in southeast Mexico, later in Texas.

Read more: www.newsobserver.com...=misearch#ixzz0r8PHATLm

That kind of optimism was unthinkable at the time of the spill, which took nearly 10 months to cap. The 30,000 barrels of oil a day it spewed into the ocean obliterated practically every living thing in its path. As it washed ashore, in some zones marine life was reduced by 50 percent; in others, 80 percent. The female population of an already-endangered species of sea turtles known as Kemp's Ridley shrank to 300, perilously close to extinction.

Read more: www.newsobserver.com...=misearch#ixzz0r8PWxond

Then a hurricane,

But after three months in which nothing went right, Texas had some good luck - or, to put it in a glass-half-empty way, Alabama and Mississippi had some bad luck. Hurricane Frederic, while plowing into those two states, sent tides of two-foot waves reeling into the Texas shoreline. Overnight, half the 3,900 tons of oil piled up on Texan beaches disappeared. And human cleanup efforts began putting a dent in the rest.

Read more: www.newsobserver.com...=misearch#ixzz0r8PrnpkD

Blow those conch shells.

[edit on 013030p://bThursday2010 by Stormdancer777]

May God richly bless you for this act of kindness and excellent research.

Hope is worth more than gold in this situation and in all things. A lot of cleanup will be needed, even if it's decades until recovery.

But recover we must, and hope is what will fuel the efforts and prayers of all.



Thanks so much, Stormdancer777. I always enjoy your thoughtful, kind, reasoned posts, and their positive radiance on ATS.

Thank you , ;o) I thought I would post these lyrics,

Who inherits the sunset?

Anathema

Born to the glare of the senses
Spoon-fed reality infused
A new inherent -
Passive contentment
You are so easily amused

Here and now we
Are gone in a heartbeat
A dream in the
Passage of time
Chances are fading
This world isn't waiting
The moment is passing you by

Questions lie beneath the surface
The fools are fooled once again

Benign coincidence -
We stole our existence
And gladly cast it to the wind

Here and now we
Are gone in a heartbeat
A dream in the
Passage of time
Chances are fading
This world isn't waiting
The moment is passing you by

Slowly spinning on the wind back home...

[edit on 013030p://bThursday2010 by Stormdancer777]

I respect both the intent of the post and the impact it will have to assuage the runaway fears of some members...

I do not wish to alarm or unduly influence anyone

I do not wish to presume this is simply propaganda to help BP and our government to quell the tensions in those people most affected by this event.

However, when the The McClatchy Company uses one of their many subsidiaries to publish something this 'timely' and 'relevant' I approach the article with some degree of skepticism. The transnational corporate connections in the media world are often used to control us. I think we should hope this is not one of those cases....

I can only hope and pray that the spill can be the subject of a miraculous recovery....

The McClatchy Company is the third-largest newspaper company in the United States, a leading newspaper and internet publisher dedicated to the values of quality journalism, free expression and community service...

Remember now, we have real live people in the world who can attest to, or dispute the veracity of recovery... I will look for some dissenting opinions, just in case we are being mislead, or patronized by subcultures that wishes us to disengage from the event.

[edit on 17-6-2010 by Maxmars]

reply to post by Maxmars

Remember now, we have real live people in the world who can attest to, or dispute the veracity of recovery... I will look for some dissenting opinions, just in case we are being mislead, or patronized by subcultures that wishes us to disengage from the event.

Yes,

Hmmm...funny...I heard from people who have gone there that 30 years later you still can't eat the seafood from that area? That's not hopeful to me.

Originally posted by ~Lucidity
Hmmm...funny...I heard from people who have gone there that 30 years later you still can't eat the seafood from that area? That's not hopeful to me.

I have no idea, has someone more then hearsay?

I looked for a while for more info, sigh.

I am not trying to undermine the magnitude of the oil spill,

One poster said the shrimping industry was back within two years,

www.tshaonline.org...

www.huntstats.com...

Texas shrimpers' worries run deep with oil spill
By HARVEY RICE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
May 4, 2010, 9:26PM
www.chron.com...

Someone has been eating the shrimp, maybe not a good thing, I don't know, I didn't even know about the spill until this article.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Well, a lot of what I find online says it had a low environmental impact, but I don't have time to research each and every source and see if it has ties to of funding by the oil industry. This information was just from friends of mine who vacationed there a couple of years ago and said they could not even find a seafood restaurant. Maybe they didn't look hard enough. Who knows.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


You know that the oil leak we have now have been increased to over 80 thousand barrels of oil a day, experts outside the BP numbers claim that is well over 100 thousand barrels a day.

The difference is big.

Now, nature always have a way to recover, but its going to take one generation or more for than.

Meaning the devastation in the gulf is all that our next generation is going to know about once beautiful gulf.

That has not price tag in any body's life.

reply to post by marg6043


Hi Marg,

Yes we know this one is different,

Gulf recovered from last big oil spill, but is this one different?

Read more: www.miamiherald.com...

Luis A. Soto, a deep-sea biologist, had earned his doctorate from the University of Miami a year before the June 3, 1979, blowout of Ixtoc 1 in 160 feet of water in the Campeche Sound, the shallow, oil-rich continental shelf off the Yucatan Peninsula.

Soto and other Mexican marine scientists feared the worst when they examined sea life in the sound once oil workers finally capped the blowout in March 1980.

"To be honest, because of our ignorance, we thought everything was going to die," Soto said.

The scientists didn't know what effects the warm temperatures of gulf waters, intense solar radiation, and other factors from the tropical ecosystem would have on the crude oil polluting the sound.

There were political implications as well; the spill pitted a furious shrimping industry, reliant on the nutrient-rich Campeche Sound, against a powerful state oil company betting its future in offshore drilling, particularly the continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico it began developing in the late 1970s.

In the months after Ixtoc 1 was capped, scientists trawled the waters of the sound for signs of biological distress.

"I found shrimp with tumor formations in the tissue, and crabs without the pincers. These were very serious effects," Soto said.

Another Mexican marine biologist, Leonardo Lizarraga Partida, said the evaluation team began measuring oil content in the sediment, evaluating microorganisms in the water and checking on the biomass of shrimp species.

As the studies extended into a second year, scientists noticed how fast the marine environment recovered, helped by naturally occurring microbes that feasted on the oil and degraded it.

Perhaps due to those microbes, Tunnell found that aquatic life along the shoreline in Texas had returned to normal within three years — even as tar balls and tar mats remained along the beaches, sometimes covered by sand.

"We were really surprised," Lizarraga said. "After two years, the conditions were really almost normal."

The Gulf currents and conditions of the Ixtoc 1 spill helped. Unlike the BP blowout, which has spewed at least 5,000 barrels of oil a day, and perhaps many times that, at depths near 5,000 feet, the Ixtoc 1 oil gushed right to the surface, and currents slowly took the crude north as far as Texas, killing turtles, sea birds and other sea life.

"I measured 80 percent reduction in all combined species that were living in the intertidal zone," said Wes Tunnell, a marine biologist at the Harte Research Institute of Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi.

While that was severe, Tunnell noted that natural oil that seeps from the seabed releases the equivalent of one to two supertankers of crude in the Gulf of Mexico each year.

Read more: www.miamiherald.com...

I also knew there was natural seepage, that is somewhat worrisome, if this includes a natural disaster having nothing to do with BP, or along with BP.

But thinking about the natural seepage, it must have some sort of affect on sea life as well.

Originally posted by Stormdancer777
I am not trying to undermine the magnitude of the oil spill,

One poster said the shrimping industry was back within two years,

www.tshaonline.org...

www.huntstats.com...

Texas shrimpers' worries run deep with oil spill
By HARVEY RICE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
May 4, 2010, 9:26PM
www.chron.com...

Someone has been eating the shrimp, maybe not a good thing, I don't know, I didn't even know about the spill until this article.

I completely understand and appreciate this effort...

I've also wondered if a hurricane wouldn't actually help by causing major dilution of the poisons in our ecological solution...

reply to post by Stormdancer777


That also worries me, that even when BP is trying now to hurry up and build two more valves to take away the pressure of the existing leak, the leak is not going away the hopes is that it will leak less.

But is more that is not been told, leaks are happening all over the gulf floor.

That is something that is not going to go away.

reply to post by HunkaHunka

I've also wondered if a hurricane wouldn't actually help by causing major dilution of the poisons in our ecological solution...

Those were my thoughts as well, not that I wish a hurricane on the gulf, but I did hear we are supposed to have a bad season this year.

Hurricane Season 2010: Experts Predict Busy Tropical Season In Atlantic

With a 70 percent probability, the NOAA has said that between 14 and 23 named storms will develop this season with winds of at least 40 mph. Additionally, 8-14 storms will advance to a hurricane state and exceed winds of 74-mph, while 3 to 7 hurricanes will be considered major hurricanes (category 3 or higher).

“If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record,” remarked Jane Lubchenco who is a NOAA administrator. “The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared.”

www.sportsbookgurus.com...

Another thing I wondered about, what about all those ships around the rig if a hurricane hits?

reply to post by marg6043

But is more that is not been told, leaks are happening all over the gulf floor.

Yes, this has been going on, is it worse? I am not sure yet.

We really don't get a lot of valid information o the subject.

Putting the Gulf Oil Spill into Perspective


The truth is oil is a natural part of our oceans. In the Gulf of Mexico alone, over 5,000 barrels of oil a day (220,000 gallons a day, over 80 million gallons a year!)seeps out from vents in the earth into the ocean. It’s part of the natural cycle, but few will speak of this truth today. Oil is a natural substance. It’s part of the earth, and obviously ocean life continues every year despite over two million barrels of oil escaping in the Gulf of Mexico alone—a very small body of water compared to the Oceans, which experience the same phenomenon. If the Gulf can survive two million barrels a year, just think how much seepage takes place in any of the oceans. It would probably be enough to make an environmentalist sick.

The largest problem within the Santa Barbara [California] channel is not drilling, but natural oil seepage. Oil and gas trapped in the Monterey Shale below the ocean floor seep up through fissures. It has been estimated that there are two billion barrels alone under an area known as the Coal Point Seeps.

Natural oil seepage in the Santa Barbara Channel was first recorded by Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo on Oct. 16, 1542. He even used the tar from the seepage, known as asphaltum, to waterproof two of his ships, just as the native Chumash Indians did with their canoes. English explorer, George Vancouver, in his exploration of the Pacific Coast in 1792 while looking for the Northwest Passage, noted in his log book that the Santa Barbara Channel was covered in all directions with an oily surface so thick that the entire sea took on an iridescent hue.

www.sodahead.com... age=2

I had no idea.

Here is a new one,

Notice,

The studies were not funded by oil companies, but rather by the University of California Energy Institute and the U.S. Minerals Management Service, states Luyendyk, responding to the fact that the results favor off-shore oil production and are opposed by some environmentalists.

According to the articles, studies of the area around Platform Holly showed a 50 percent decrease in natural seepage over 22 years. The researchers show that as the oil was pumped out the reservoir, pressure that drives the seepage dropped.

"If the decrease in natural seepage found near Platform Holly is representative of the effect of oil production on seepage worldwide, then this has the potential to significantly alter global oil and gas seepage in the future," state the researchers in the article "The World's Most Spectacular Marine Hydrocarbon Seeps: Quantification of Emissions " in the Sept. 14 issue of the Journal of Geological Research - Oceans.

They continue, "For example if the 50 percent reduction in natural seepage rate that occurred around Platform Holly also occurred due to future oil production from the oil field beneath the La Goleta seep, this would result in a reduction in nonmethane hydrocarbon emission rates equivalent to removing half of the on-road vehicle traffic from Santa Barbara County. In addition, a 50 percent reduction in seepage from the La Goleta seep would remove about 25 barrels of oil per day from the sea surface, which in turn would result in a 15 percent reduction in the amount of tar found on Santa Barbara beaches."

They conclude by saying that the rate of increase of global methane atmospheric concentrations has been declining for the past 20 years, and that a "worldwide decrease in natural hydrocarbon seepage related to onshore and offshore oil production may be causing a global reduction in natural methane emission rates."

www.ia.ucsb.edu...

reply to post by Stormdancer777


There is natural seepage, of course, but 2 million barrels a year spread over the entire Gulf sea floor is going to be pretty diffuse. Tar balls wash up on a regular basis, but when has a slick the size of Scotland been seen, or plumes of oil beneath the surface that look like the ash plume from a volcano?

As with everything, there is probably a balance to be struck. There is no doubt that the Gulf's coastal and marine ecosystems have remarkable powers of recovery, but there are still some areas of the Mexican coast, following the '79 leak, where a knife blad stuck into the sand will come up black, and the fish stocks in some areas are still massively depleted compared to what they were.



[edit on 17-6-2010 by Karilla]

reply to post by Karilla


No doubt what you say is true, there are many things wrong with our environment, and the seas they say are over fished as well,

There was a time when we could move on and relocate once we overused the natural habitat, now we are pretty much stuck.

I don't really have any answers, mother nature has.

We are facing enormous changes, and insurmountable obstacles, but I believe there is a power higher then ourselves that runs the show.







[edit on 043030p://bThursday2010 by Stormdancer777]

www.flickr.com...

The worst oil spills in history.