The Gulf of Mexico is a magnificent resource: a kind of natural
engine for the production of wild, highly nutritious foodstuff.
Here's how the EPA describes it:
Gulf fisheries are some of the most productive in the world. In
2008 according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the
commercial fish and shellfish harvest from the five U.S. Gulf
states was estimated to be 1.3 billion pounds valued at $661
million. The Gulf also contains four of the top seven fishing
ports in the nation by weight. The Gulf of Mexico has eight of
the top twenty fishing ports in the nation by dollar value.
According to the EPA, the Gulf is the home of 59 percent of U.S.
oyster production. Nearly three-quarters of wild shrimp
harvested in the United States call it home. It is a major
breeding ground for some of the globe's most prized and
endangered fish, including bluefin tuna, snapper, and grouper.
It would be a wise policy to protect the Gulf, to nurture the
health of its ecosytems, to leave it at least as productive as
we found it for the next generations. As climate change proceeds
apace and population grows, sources of cheap, low-input,
top-quality food will be increasingly precious.
So, how are we doing? As I write this, oil is gushing into the
Gulf at the rate of 5,000 barrels per day, 5,000 feet below the
water's surface, The New York Times reports. Above the surface,
an oil slick with a circumference of 600 miles is lurching
along, lashed by wind toward the coasts.
By Friday, it will have reached Louisiana's wildlife-rich coast.
And according to MarketWatch, "Beaches in Alabama and
Mississippi are also threatened, and, if the spill spreads into
the Gulf's 'Loop Current,' it could devastate coastlines as far
away as southeastern Florida."
For fisheries, the situation is atrocious. Direct contact with
high oil concentrations kill fish quickly. But low-concentration
contact can have horrible impacts, too. According to Greenpeace:
Even when the oil does not kill, it can have more subtle and
long-lasting negative effects. For example, it can damage fish
eggs, larva and young -- wiping out generations. It also can
bio-accumulate up through the food chain as predators (including
humans) eat numbers of fish (or other wildlife) that have
sub-lethal amounts of oil stored in their bodies.
Tragically, now seems to be a particularly awful time for a
massive spill. On the Oceana blog, Matt Niemerski writes:
[S]cientists say this is a critical time for bird life in the
region because it is peak nesting and migration time for
hundreds of species. Endangered sea turtles are beginning to lay
their eggs along beaches in the area and bluefin tuna are
spawning right now. Whales, dolphins and sea turtles are also at
risk because they could inhale oil when they come to the surface
to breathe.
What started with a human tragedy and suspected tragic loss of
11 lives on April 21, now appears to be unfolding into one of
the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
And that's not all.
It should be remembered that oil drilling is not the only human
activity that imperils this vital ecosystem. Every year,
millions of tons of synthetic nitrogen and mined phosphorous
leach from Midwestern farm fields and into streams that drain
into the Mississippi. The great river deposits those
agrichemicals right into the Gulf, where they feed a
7,000-square-mile algae bloom that sucks up oxygen and snuffs
out sea life underneath.
The bulk of this vast Dead Zone's rogue nutrients comes from the
growing of corn, our nation's largest farm crop. Half of the
corn crop ends up in feedlots, feeding cows, chicken, and pigs
stuffed together in pollution-spewing, factory-style feedlots.
The federal government has mounted an effort to stem the flow of
fertilizer from farms to the Gulf. But policies that encourage
maximum production of corn -- including mandates and tax breaks
for corn ethanol -- overwhelm those gestures. Thus the Dead Zone
has become a routine fact of life in the Gulf, the cost of doing
business for a food system that prizes cheapness and industry
profit above all else.