Sharks Gather at Oily Shore To Escape Oxygen Dead Zone in Gulf (Video)

Ben Raines of the Press-Register in Alabama has captured a remarkable and disturbing sight on video near the shore; sharks and other sea life crowding the oiled waters in need of oxygen no longer available to them in the Gulf:

Video footage shot on June 18 by Ben Raines of the Press-Register and uploaded the following day captured both oil in the water and a Gulf water teeming with sharks. The video closes with a view of a discarded American flag in the water, clotted with oil like the crab in front of it.

...The Dauphin Island Sea Lab measured large areas of low oxygen water just off the beach at Fort Morgan earlier this month, beginning in water around 20 feet deep. Monty Graham, a University of South Alabama scientist, theorized that the population of oil-consuming microbes had swelled, and those tiny animals consumed lots of oxygen.

Sea life begins to die if oxygen drops below two parts per million. Those levels may explain the dense aggregations of fish seen in the surf zone. The turbulent area near shore is naturally high in oxygen due to the influence of the breaking waves.

The video has gone viral on the web. The story of oxygen depletion is likely the first and not the last as the impact of the oil becomes more widespread.

Related articles at this link:  Articles on the Gulf Oil Disaster

Historical Aerial Footage Reveals Scope of the BP Gulf Oil Disaster (Video)

Live video feed panel of cameras from the Gulf Floor (may load slowly): http://climate.the-environmentalist.org/2010/06/live-video-feeds-of-gulf-oil-disaster.html

The source article is available at this link:  http://blog.al.com/live/2010/06/sharks_in_oily_water_video_vie.html



LABELS: BP, ENVIRONMENT, FAUNA, FLORA, GULF OIL DISASTER, GULF OIL SPILL, PRESS-REGISTER,SCIENCE