(Repost from 2010) Deep sea damage to coral reefs found in the Gulf

This month marks the seven-year anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill. The following article originally ran on Examiner.com, Nov. 7, 2010. It has been lightly edited.

On Nov. 4, 2010 the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) returned from an expedition in the Gulf of Mexico that determined corals have been affected by oil that gushed from the Macondo well.

On its web site, NOAA sites the mission of federal and academic scientists as having observed "damage to deep-sea corals" on the research cruise.

Charles Fisher, Ph.D., professor of biology at Penn State and chief scientist on the expedition, described some of the soft coral observed in an area measuring 15 to 40 meters "as covered by what appeared to be a brown substance. Ninety percent of 40 large corals were heavily affected and showed dead and dying parts and discoloration," according to a NOAA statement.

Another site 400 meters away had a colony of stony coral similarly affected and partially covered with a similar brown substance.

The mission in the Gulf comes to a head after numerous weeks that found the scientists exploring deep-sea coral habitats in the Gulf.

Nov. 4 marked the conclusion of this year’s cruise, the fourth of a multiyear collaboration sponsored by NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE).

Operating from the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown and using a variety of tools including the National Deep Submergence Facility’s Jason II remotely-operated vehicle (ROV), researchers foraged 1,400 meters deep (4,600 feet) and about seven miles southwest of the Macondo wellhead when they observed "dead and dying corals with sloughing tissue and discoloration," according to the NOAA statement.

The New York Times reported the story in its Sunday edition, drawing increasing focus on the extant issue that has brewed in scientists' minds for over 200 days: just how have marine life been impacted in the deep-sea waters of the Gulf?

With more analyses of the coral samples, definitive conclusions should soon be drawn.

Photos: Via Wikimedia Commons Images. Top - Deepwater Horizon oil spill at Chandeleur Islands LA (separate from the area studied by Dr. Charles Fisher), May 2010, by Jeffrey Warren, Grass Roots Mapping project.Creative Commons Attribution:http://grassrootsmapping.org/2010/05/grassroots-map-imagery-of-bp-oil-spill-raw-data-now-online/; Bottom - Coral colony in the Gulf of Mexico affected by the 2010 oil spill, , image courtesy of Lophelia II 2010 Expedition, NOAA-OER/BOEMRE.

To read a recent paper on how the corals of the Gulf were affected by the BP oil spill, see: Fisher, C.R., P.A. Montagna, and T.T. Sutton. 2016. How did the Deepwater Horizon oil spill impact deep-sea ecosystems? Oceanography 29(3):182–195, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2016.82.