Today marks ten years since the BP Oil Spill ravaged the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem, and environmental scars exist still to this day.
National Wildlife Federation Gulf of Mexico Restoration Director David Muth says the critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle was recovering as a species before 2010 but since then they’ve been backsliding.
“A lot of females were killed, and so there are fewer females nesting, but there are also possible long term health effects,” says Muth.
Muth says Coastal bottlenose dolphins have seen their successful birthrate remain less than a quarter of what it was before their habitat was poisoned by the spill.
“Females giving births to stillborn and sick babies, and we still see malnutrition and lower weight, and other various effects of the toxicity in dolphins,” says Muth.
The spill also killed off 17 percent of the Gulf’s Bryde whales, an impact that’s seen them be added to, and remain on the endangered species list since.
Muth says the overall ecological impact remains horrific, but the one silver lining to result from the calamity was the more than 16 billion in fines that paid for coastal restoration projects across south Louisiana, including most of the Barataria Bay islands. He says Louisiana received over eight billion dollars in payments as a result of the spill.