Amidst an oil spill expected to cause great devastation for the marine life and businesses dependent on these delicacies, many people are wondering what the aftermath will be on our water supply and health in years to come. President Obama has even called the accident “a potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.”
According to the NYTimes, the oil spill, currently pouring out 210,000 gallons of oil a day since its April 20th explosion abroad the Deepwater Horizon, ultimate impact will depend on a long list of interlinked variables, including the weather, ocean currents, the properties of the oil involved and the success or failure of the frantic efforts to stanch the flow and remediate its effects.
Some experts, however, believe that “while the potential for catastrophe remained, there were reasons to remain guardedly optimistic.”
“The sky is not falling,” said Quenton R. Dokken, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Golf of Mexico Foundation, a conservation group in Corpus Christi, Tex. “We’ve certainly stepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico.”
And while “these experts” are optimistic, fears are ignited, perhaps, by one of the most detrimental oil spills of all time, the Exxon Valdex oil spill of 1989; of which cause great environmental devastation to our marine life even to this very day.
“The gulf is tremendously resilient,” said Dr. Dokken, the marine biologist. “But we’ve always got to ask ourselves how long can we keep heaping these insults on the gulf and having it bounce back. As a scientist, I have to say I just don’t know.”
