Of Whale Sharks And Oilmen

Grrlscientist has a worthwhile post at scienceblogs.com on Whale Sharks and how they're faring as BP tries its damnedest to replace the Gulf of Mexico's seawater with crude oil.

In addition to the near-miraculous (100 Whale Sharks feeding en masse in what might be a relatively -- and our standards are pretty low at this point -- untainted area) and the heart-wrenching (three of them swimming right in the thick of the spill), there's this thought-provoking detail from a piece by Ben Raines of the Press-Register:

"Our worst fears are realized. They are not avoiding the spill area," said Eric Hoffmayer, the University of Southern Mississippi scientist who found the large aggregation last week. "Those animals are going to succumb. Taking mouthfuls of oil is not good. It is not the toxicity that will kill them. It's that oil is going to be sticking to their gills and everything else."

Whale sharks, the largest fish on earth, feed by filtering plankton and tiny fish from the water through sieve-like mechanisms in their mouths.

"Based on all the information I'm getting, they are doing the normal things regardless of the oil. The idea that sharks have these evolved senses that will protect them -- well, they haven't evolved to detect oil," Hoffmayer said.

Now, I got inadvertently doused with gasoline pretty good by an attendant at a Stuckey's gas station outside Denver, Colorado once. And given that unpleasant episode, I'd never really contemplated the notion that any creature could be anything but acutely aware of being immersed in something like crude oil or its byproducts. But that could be the case here.

The Only Sure Bet Is Devastation

I can appreciate nihilistic humor as much as the next fellow. But it's certainly grating to see that bookmakers at Paddy Power are taking bets on which sea creature will be driven to extinction first in the wake of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The odds-on-favorite was the Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle at 4/5 when I checked today, followed by the Bluefin Tuna at 6/4, then the Leatherback Sea Turtle and the Brown Pelican at 8/1 each.

Hat tip: Richard Black's Earth Watch blog, which added:

I wondered, though, whether species extinctions are a suitable subject for gambling. Isn't inviting people to estimate the relative odds of two species taking the dodo trail in the pursuit of cash just a bit - well - tasteless?

[Paddy Power's] Mr Robertson countered with the opposite notion. It's actually a positive thing for conservation, he said, because punters whose knowledge of the natural world extends to horses and greyhounds might discover a bit more in the process of trying to beat the odds.

Diver Down: Inside The BP Slick

While the nut-job reporting detracts from it (I mean, the reporter actually says, "As bad as the pictures have been for more than a month now, you really don't get the full scope by looking at the surface."), this ABC News video is among the first that I've seen dipping beneath the surface of BP's gushing gift to Mother Nature.

But what it thankfully does is draw attention to the woeful inadequacies of the "dispersant approach" to such spills. Philippe Cousteau sounds like one of those who don't put a lot of stock in the effects of such toxic cocktails.

Worst Of All Possible Times For BP Spill

This article in "The New York Times" piles more bad news on what we're seeing playing itself out in the Gulf of Mexico.

Spring is mating and spawning season for almost everything in the gulf: Fill a jar with plankton from the local waters in the spring and it will typically contain the larvae of 80 species. All the eggs and hatchlings are surface dwellers, with almost no ability to swim away from the slick.