Sick Fish In Gulf Alarming Scientists

Today the Pensacola News Journal ran an article that stated that after a study by the University of West Florida that the oil is gone.....any effects on microbes was short term not long term. The only caution was that there might be tar mats submersed off shore and that tar balls might continue to wash up for years...
Do I believe the oil is gone? No. I think it is all emulsified into the water and is affecting the sea life. I think we will continue to feel the effects for a long time. I and mine are not going into that water this summer. We have not eaten Gulf seafood since the spill.
What do you all think?

reply to post by Elienne


i'd be more concerned about the corexit than the oil. since this leak occured, it seems it has been difficult to nail down officials to admit that the dispersant has had an effect on the eco-system. i suppose oil money has been thrown around to such a degree that the issue remains submerged.

i'm sure you will make the best decision as to whether you swim or spend time on the coast. take plenty of babywipes if you do and best wishes.

f.

reply to post by Elienne


gotta say, i've been eating tinned salmon and lately it hasn't looked right. just looks fatty and ...WEIRD... kinda gross. not how it used to look.

im in australia. just my observation.

also no surprise all the animals are mutating and getting sick; humans are getting cancer at ever increasing rates too due to all the toxins and chemicals we put into our food, water, environment. we're all linked together; part of the food chain. pollution somewhere on this sphere will eventually catch up with us; and it is.

My buddy has been going fishing in the Bahamas every year for 10 years. He spends 2 weeks to a month down there every time. He is an avid fisherman, and he is an expert at it.

This year, in 2 weeks, he caught 3 fish. He said it was surreal, they were just not biting. There are no fish. He said the locals told him it was the worst fishing season they had ever seen in their lives.

I don't know for sure that it is linked to the Gulf Oil, but if the shrimp are deformed, then it seems logical that a lot of the baitfish and feeder fish are suffering, and that leaves less food source for the game fish.

reply to post by Elienne

I and mine are not going into that water this summer. We have not eaten Gulf seafood since the spill.
What do you all think?

I've been saying this a lot ever since the spill. Even if you took a spoonful of the oil, it probably wouldn't give you anything worse than diarreah. The Corexit is like a supercharged mixture of Dawn Dishwashing Soap and WD40. All the terrible side effects of Corexit, like cell membrane explosion, are all common side effects of any soap. There is no reason not to swim in the Gulf.

As for eating Gulf Seafood, if the fish looks healthy, then it is safe to eat. There is no reason to be concerned. If you catch something that doesn't look like it is healthy, then don't eat it. I've eaten a lot this year. Mahi, Flounder, Sheepshead, Oysters, all fresh caught, and all DELICIOUS!

I do think the oil spill is affecting sea life, and I think it will be a 20 year effect that destroys the fishing industry in a lot of places, and I think the oil is still there, but the only thing we can do as residents along the Gulf is be wary and use common sense. No reason to overreact, just use common sense.

ok, that seems like a pretty ignorant post to me. The VOC's in oil are very toxic, and to say it "probably would just give you a little diarrhea" is silly. What probability of probably? And what for those that fall outside that probability? They have not done indepth studies into the long term buildup or exposure to petroleum on humans, but in the amazon, tribes have won the largest ecological lawsuit in history, last year, because their children are all getting cancer.
And to say the corexit is like "super charged soap" and that makes it ok, is ludicrous too. WE DONT EAT LYE EITHER! and for good reason. I love how when people say the seafood is ok to eat, they reiterate how "DELICIOUS" it is, as if that says anything. You can fry anything and it tastes good, and yes, if you know how to cook (like me) then you can put shoe leather in to braise with some garlic and butter, and it will taste great. Doesnt mean its good for you.
They let hundreds of thousands die before they admitted tobacco was bad for you. They let thousands of soldiers suffer from ptsd, agent orange, and gulf war syndrome. THEY dont ever want to tell you anything is wrong until it is undeniable. We have a society that ONLY responds when the crisis is imminent and indisputable. They will never tell you its bad, even 15 years from now, when people are all getting cancer and having symptoms from "gulf coast syndrome", and the children are being born deformed and with learning disabilities. It will be the same pattern we saw during above ground testing of nukes near towns, denial from big brother, even as brain tumors among children skyrocketed.
There is no reason to eat questionable food when there is healthy food available. If you choose a food with possible consequences, KNOWING that many of its own kind are being deformed, growing tumors and such (as reported in massive scale by many fishermen) then when you get "gulf coast syndrome", dont expect the govt to jump in and try to fix you up, or give you money. They dont work that way. Choices, choices.

reply to post by pexx421


"Probably" as in a small percentage of people will have extra sensitivity, but the average person will not be affected. People that have worked around automotives and aircraft know you can ingest a lot of oil without having any health effects.

I was not talking about long-term exposure to petrochemicals, I was talking about swimming in the Gulf, or eating the occasional seafood.

And Yes, you can use shoe polish to make prison liquor.

I would imagine that the Siona, Secoya, Cofanes, Huaoranis, Tetete, and Sansahuari tribes in ecuador, along the amazon, who have had thousands of deaths due to cancer from the toxicity of the spilled oil from drilling in the rainforest area would disagree with you about the minimal effects of consuming wildlife contaminated with petroleum....and thats even without the corexit. And this is not conjecture, they won the lawsuit against chevron, which means the courts got enough evidence that the oil was directly responsible to convince them of the veracity of the tribesmens claims.

And I would like to point out one more thing. The people in the gulf area (yes i live there too) dont eat the "occasional seafod". It is a regular part of their diet. Our government has not made an estimate of the realistic amount of exposure that the average person here is getting from their diet. And the idea that if you cannot see anything wrong with the fish, because the toxic diet has not been made manifest externally yet, means that it is safe, is a wrong with corexit and petroleum as it is with mercury. Sorry if my posts here seem an attack. They are not meant as an attack upon you, rather as a rebuttal to the "everything is fine here move along" mentality that has allowed my family and friends to continue to consume what I think will wind up being a dangerous food.

I work in hospitals, so I see tragic outcomes to what are considered "normal" lifestyle habits all the time. Further, I was in the military, and first hand witness to our governments duplicity in covering up truth when it came to gulf war syndrome, and only now are the true results of our using depleted uranium shells being exposed, as 30% of children being born in fallujah have no eyes, one arm, massive brain deformities....and our soldiers children are often suffering similar defects once they are back home.

Guys, I've mentioned many times that I believe this is an epic disaster, and the full scale of the damage won't be known for decades. Of course this is a big deal, but there are not people showing up in emergency rooms from eating the seafood, and there is not any harm in swimming in the Gulf.

I have a friend with a Marine Testing and Speciman lab, and he has not seen any adverse effects over here in the Big Bend area. There are some pretty alarming things showing up in Louisiana, but not in Florida.

The Youtube videos and outrageous claims of skin disease or health effects are either totally fraudulent, or isolated cases of allergic reactions.

A person can literally bath in crude oil, ingest a little of it, wash off with astringent and soap (corexit), and be perfectly fine. I don't recommend doing it, but it is not an emergency to get some oil on you.

Life-long effects are a different story, but so is the life-long effect of eating McDonald's or bleached flour, or GMO food. We are not discussing life-long effects, we are talking about tourism. A visit to the beach, or a fishing trip into the Gulf is not dangerous whatsoever. Living along the coast and ingesting Gulf Seafood for life may or may not be something to worry about, we just don't know yet. We do know that living in a big city, eating fast food, and inhaling smog is extremely harmful, so I would take my chances on the beach with the local seafood compared to the typical cty lifestyle on any day!

At around the same time as the oil well problem we also had flooding which added a lot of chemicals from our land into the gulf. What a shame that the fish and other sea creatures have to pay for our stupidity. The oil was natural, the chemicals man created caused way more problems to the environment. Hiding things usually causes a lot of problems. Deceit always accelerates things in the long run.

I understand you to be saying that it wont kill you instantly, so its no big deal. Yes, you can bathe in petrol, and you wont die right off. Similarly, you can jog through fukushima right now, and you likely wont drop dead. That does not mean it is nothing to worry about. If you hold mercury in your hand, you wont drop dead....but the effects on your neurological tissues will likely be extensive, and the effects upon your children can be catastrophic. In no wise would I tell the people around fukushima prefecture, "hey, no one has dropped dead yet from the radiation, so just keep eating the fish and drinking the tea, and you should be fine with little more than a stomach ache....for now".

reply to post by pexx421


Under our present legal system here in America a person or corporation can not be held accountable for unforseen consequences until they happen and are proven to originate exclusively from the action of the corporation or individual. If something else happened that may have also caused the condition than there is no legal proof. Another words, there is nothing anyone can do in the future because we are exposed to so many other toxins in daily life and in foods that a lawsuit is fruitless. Remember that laws have been created by these people not us using the best interest of the people as precedence. (That's best interest of their people)

Originally posted by pexx421
I understand you to be saying that it wont kill you instantly, so its no big deal. Yes, you can bathe in petrol, and you wont die right off. Similarly, you can jog through fukushima right now, and you likely wont drop dead.

No, you probably would drop dead if you jogged through Fukushima.

If you hold mercury in your hand, you wont drop dead....but the effects on your neurological tissues will likely be extensive, and the effects upon your children can be catastrophic.

Wrong again, the mercury molecule is too large to be absorbed through the skin. It has to be ingested or inhaled to be dangerous. There are MANY of us that played with Mercury as kids, and we didn't have any health effects from it. I also grew up in an area with Lead in the water, and Lead poisoning is almost unheard of. Many of the things you often read about are just the results of large lawsuits, not any real danger. Mercury and Lead are not all that dangerous, unless you do something stupid like eat it or snort it.

I remember when they said metal miniblinds would attract lead, and then babies could inhale it and get sick. Well, there were a lot more babies wrapping themselves up in the cords and dying, or falling out of the cribs than the 1 or 2 that might have had a sensitivity to lead and inhaled just enough to get sick. The "experts" should really prioritize better and stop letting large lawsuits dictate where they focus there efforts.

In no wise would I tell the people around fukushima prefecture, "hey, no one has dropped dead yet from the radiation, so just keep eating the fish and drinking the tea, and you should be fine with little more than a stomach ache....for now".

Nor would I, because Fukushima has lethal doses of radiation. People are already dying, and the area is already evacuated. No one is dying in the Gulf, no one is evacuated in the Gulf, the seafood has been tested, and is ongoingly being tested, and sometimes they reject a load of shrimp, but in general the food is safe. We already have precautionary processes in place. We are lucky this happened in the US, and not Somalia, because we actually have safety protocols in place.

Comparing the Gulf situation to the Fukushima situation is ridiculous. A pea-sized pill of radiation can kill you, but a cup full of crude oil will just give you diarreah. They are night and day comparisons.

If you catch a fish with 3 eyes, don't eat it. If you catch a Shrimp with no eyes, don't eat it. If the fish is fat, healthy, good scales, etc., then it is fine to eat. You can tell a lot about whether or not something is safe to eat by deciding if it was healthy or not when you caught it.

Personally, I don't eat processed fish, beef, chicken for that very reason. I grew up around cattle auctions and slaughter houses, and there were guys buying the "downer" cattle that were very unhealthy, and they were buying them cheaply and selling them to slaughter houses to get into your favorite Taco Bell or McD's meats! I only eat stuff that looks like it is supposed to look! Especially meats.

I'd rather eat a fresh, healthy fish from the Gulf, than to eat a McD's double cheeseburger any day!

It is an epic disaster.
Here is a interactive map of where the oil is.
But that's about it,no mention of the toxins used to disperse the oil.

response.restoration.noaa.gov...

BTW,ERMA is a great resource for fishing and shrimping closures.

gomex.erma.noaa.gov...=-87.39075&y=29.74053&z=8&layers=17770+5723+20136+20257+14616+11248+11027+18680+15966+11724+9700

reply to post by kdog1982

That is an interesting website ( ERMA ) . I know I read about oil sheens still observed in the gulf. Between all the corexit and the oil, I still think that the seafood is best avoided, as well as swimming in the gulf. I would rather err on the side of caution than hurt my family or myself.. I do agree that the corexit is the more dangerous long term problem.

I recently seen an image of a sphere beside earth which represented all the water in the world combined in a sphere for side by side comparison. It would be interesting to do this with the amount of oil spilled by BP accident just for comparison purposes, something like that might help people realize how big of an event this was. We are destroying our planet

Originally posted by gartenspinnen
I recently seen an image of a sphere beside earth which represented all the water in the world combined in a sphere for side by side comparison. It would be interesting to do this with the amount of oil spilled by BP accident just for comparison purposes, something like that might help people realize how big of an event this was. We are destroying our planet

No, something like that would do exactly the opposite. The amount of oil spilled, compared to the amount of water on the surface of the earth would be microscopic and inconsequential.

It is a tragedy because it gets into breeding grounds, and disrupts life cycles, but it really wasn't all that much oil. There are places in the world that have been spilling more oil than BP for decades. American cars drop as much oil on the roads every year as what BP spilled.

We are destroying our Earth with our practices, but the BP spill was just a drop in the bucket.... literally.

reply to post by Elienne

I still think that the seafood is best avoided, as well as swimming in the gulf. I would rather err on the side of caution than hurt my family or myself.. I do agree that the corexit is the more dangerous long term problem.

Corexit degrades in days to months. It is not the more dangerous longterm problem. Now, corexit bound to oil and sunk to the bottom of the sea is not well-researched, so it could be a problem, and we know the oil is a problem, but the corexit by itself is less dangerous than the 100 million dishwashers and carwashes using harsh cleansers every day and dumping it into our sewer systems.

As far as swimming in the Gulf, let me tell you a story. This summer alone, my family (I have a pretty little wife, and a 5 and 4 year old son, and then big ol' ogre me), has swam in the Gulf multiple times, we have eaten Gulf Oysters, Gulf Sheepshead, Gulf Flounder (all freshly caught), and we have swam in lakes in Georgia (flesh-eating bacteria), and my 5 year old and I actually ended up with open wounds while swimming in the Georgia lakes, we have also visited Central and South Florida, and we have also tubed down several streams in Missouri, and drank water coming directly out the side of a rock bluff, (extremely cold, wonderful spring water). We've played in the rain and mud puddles, swam alongside alligators, played day after day after day in the direct sunlight with no sunscreen. I had a longer list I was teasing my mother about, but that is all I can think of at the moment.

We aren't sick. We don't have flesh-eating bacteria. We don't have diarreah. We don't have skin cancer. We weren't eaten by alligators. I also got pulled over twice, with my gun concealed in its holster, out of state plates, and I didn't get tazed, harassed, or bullied, in fact the officer apologized for having to write a ticket, but due to budgetary issues, they have to write tickets if they pull you over, no exceptions. We aren't zombified, in fact, my kids and I really never get sick, ever. An occasional cough during the dry winter, but that is about it.

Take your kids to the Gulf, get them some sunshine, exercise, and fresh fish. It makes way more sense than not doing it.