The BP Dead Zone

OK. Time for me to talk about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. First let me say that it sucks. Like the rest of the US, I hate to think my next trip to Sarasota, or Pensacola could have me finding balls of tar and bloated, greasy, dead pelicans washed up along the beach. But at the same time I don't feel comfortable pointing a finger at BP and placing all the blame on them. The truth is they wouldn't be drilling in the ocean in the first place if all of us weren't buying gas for our cars and throwing a fit every time it it goes above 3.00 a gallon. Sure they should take some responsibility, but I think it's ridiculous to crucify them over an unfortunate (maybe even preventable) accident. There is nothing they can do now to take it back. I am sure they would if they could. For a really great (and much more in depth) discussion on this please read this blog by J.J.Smith.

I just read a really interesting article about the spill. Click here for the full text if you are interested. And I was struck not so much by the facts as I was by the perspective taken by the scientists about what those facts mean. They estimate that 40% of what is being extruded from the spill is methane. The article says that the "problem" with the seeping of methane into the ocean is that it creates "dead zones" where only microbes, bacteria and methane eating ice worms live. OK I get that as humans we are more sympathetic to living things with eyes, and mouths that would look good swimming around in a fish tank, but the fact of the matter is it ain't "dead" if bacteria and microbes are living there. The scientist go on to say that the millions of methane eating microbes are using up all the oxygen in the water and in effect suffocating all the other marine life. Like I said at the beginning. That sucks...but only for the fish, and only for right now. Anything that can metabolize huge quantities of methane, is probably exactly what the Gulf needs right now. How else do we propose to get rid of it all? True it's not good for the rest of the marine environment right now, but it will be to their advantage in the long run.
Another thing the article seems to have forgotten is that the microbes will not multiply forever and suck the oxygen out of the entire Gulf. They will decline and eventually die out as the amount of methane in the water decreases. (That is why there aren't "dead zones" in the ocean normally.) Then (however far into the future that is) the oxygen stores will improve as the water circulates, and other marine animals will slowly make their way back into their old habitats, and life will go on. I understand that it might not happen for quite a while, but that doesn't mean that the Gulf will be dead forever. It just needs time. Think about that huge oil spill that happened in 1979 off the coast of Mexico. Maybe the entire ecosystem hasn't rebounded yet, but it's 20 years later and fish are back, and the water is a crystal clear turquoise again. I realize that some animals may go extinct, populations of sea birds might decline, and there will be blobs of tar mixed in the sand on our favorite beaches for the rest of our lifetimes. But that's part of life. A random earthquake out in the Gulf could have produced the same "spill" and the animals would have suffered just the same as they are now.

I think we should do whatever we can to mitigate the spill because our own morality tells us we must, and because our desire to preserve our world shows us how much we value our home. That's good. But we should also try to understand that nature has her own way of dealing with disasters, and we should respect it and not freak out about it or try to change it. We are so biased and haughty, but life is not. The "dead zones" aren't dead, they are a nature's clean up crew hard at work and we should appreciate that, and be amazed by it's efficiency. Sometimes letting nature take it's course is the best thing to do. We shouldn't be so judgemental about how she goes about recovering from disaster. What do we know? We constantly seem to underestimate the power of life to survive even though the record shows again and again the success it has had in repopulating the world following all sorts of catastrophes. Nature's done it before and she'll do it again. With or without our help. The least we can do is appreciate the effort.