--- title: Potential Long-Term Damage from the Gulf Oil Spill | TIME description: Marine Biologist Rick Steiner describes the potential long-term effects on marine life and ecosystems from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico canonical: https://time.com/video/eWjvR62M/ og:title: Potential Long-Term Damage from the Gulf Oil Spill og:description: Marine Biologist Rick Steiner describes the potential long-term effects on marine life and ecosystems from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico og:url: https://time.com/video/eWjvR62M/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/eWjvR62M/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Potential Long-Term Damage from the Gulf Oil Spill twitter:description: Marine Biologist Rick Steiner describes the potential long-term effects on marine life and ecosystems from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/eWjvR62M/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Potential Long-Term Damage from the Gulf Oil Spill > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Potential Long-Term Damage from the Gulf Oil Spill [Watch (HLS stream): Potential Long-Term Damage from the Gulf Oil Spill](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eWjvR62M.m3u8) (3:38)  _Published 2010-05-24. Marine Biologist Rick Steiner describes the potential long-term effects on marine life and ecosystems from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico_ --- Jul 27, 2023 2:16 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Evicted by the Oil Spill](/video/7QmVOip9/) ### Evicted by the Oil Spill [The Gulf Oil Spill by the Numbers](/video/1VyYPAD3/) ### The Gulf Oil Spill by the Numbers [Portraits From the Oil Spill](/video/DxeqNR0P/) ### Portraits From the Oil Spill --- ## Transcript >> I'm Rick Steiner. I'm a professor of conservation biology. I've worked around the world on oil spills. I was with the University of Alaska for 30 years and I'm down here in Southern Louisiana out in the Gulf of Mexico taking-- doing a rapid assessment of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the deep water horizon event. The most outrageous part of this to me is the fact that the federal government allowed BP to drill this very novel exploration well and 5, 000 feet of water down an 18, 000- foot reservoir without having a contingency plan for this very scenario, a blowout, when they were disconnecting the rig from the wellhead. The response has been limited and ineffective. If you have-- they've got a couple of hundred vessels hired, BP does out there. I watched them for a couple of days. And unfortunately, because this oil is so emulsified, by the time it reaches the sea surface from the blowout and then drifts near shore, it's about the same intensity as sea water. So, when it hits the booms, it just goes under them. It's not working. Oil companies love the notion of using dispersants on an oil spill primarily because it gets the oil out of sight, out of mind. It sinks it from the surface and so TV cameras and the public can't see it. But if you're dispersing it down in the water column, there's absolutely no possibility of recovering it from the environment. So, it reduces the amount that you can recover. It reduces it from public eye. A lot of this oil that finally did reach the surface has now transported back down into the water column. And so, the water column, that was here before not contaminated is contaminated. So, some of the oil that though that has reached the Barrier Islands and shore off the Mississippi Delta is this very thick, dewy mousse it's called. It's an oil water emulsion that has a very strong odor and it's still very toxic. It probably has some dispersant-- some chemical dispersant in it as well. The combination of the chemical dispersant, which has some toxicity on its own and the crude oil, which certainly has toxicity on its own, the combination of the two can actually be more toxic than either one in isolation. There's a synergy that goes on. Most of the organisms that encounter it will be dozed with a toxic substance. Many will die immediately particularly the more sensitive sages of fish, a fish larvae, fish eggs, the blue fin tuna are responding right now or have chronic sub- lethal injury, genetic impacts. So, there's no way around it. There's no wind here. It's all a lose- lose. This much oil going into a productive coastal environment will cause significant injury whether you see it on the beaches or not. The damage has already been done. The other thing about that is once the oil and the toxic dispersant oil mixture gets into the seabed sediments, the next hurricane or the first hurricane that comes through here, guess what? It's gonna turn all that up and recontaminate the water system. With the storm surge from a hurricane, then guess what? It will transport the contaminated sediment and water right into the bayous and the delta that we wanted to protect in the first place. 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