Oil spills have a tremendous impact on marine creatures and can trigger DNA damage

Dec 2, 2011 14:17 GMT  ·  By
vessels battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon
   vessels battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon

An oil spill has a devastating impact on marine population even after the clean-up operations are over. This is the result of a project developed for two years, in which experts tried to evaluate the total damage caused by accidental marine pollution.

In their study, scientists focused on the effects of various types of oil, from Arabian light crude to the diesel commonly used to power ships, the Environment News Service reports.

A team of researchers from Norway, Spain France and the UK worked in partnership to reveal the long-term effects of water pollution.

While trying to indicate how oil spill threaten the mussel, cod and spotted goby fish populations, and which of those substances has the highest level of toxicity, researchers discovered that oil has the most harmful impact throughout the breakdown process, according to Ketil Hylland from University of Oslo's Department of Biology.

Toxprof researchers succeeded in highlighting that an oil spill still has a series of consequences even after the authorities finished handling the clean-up operations.

After simulating in their labs what usually happens when the environment has to face a spill of this kind, experts say the oil reaches into the sand and finally finds its way into water masses.

All in all, the consequences of accidental water pollution are correlated with an alarming DNA damage in some of the cases.

While every kind of oil had a different impact on fish and other marine creatures, scientists agree that all the contaminants display significant adverse effects long after clean-up operations tried to restore the balance of the affected sites.

"Many sites may experience negative impacts for 15 to 20 years following a large-scale oil spill, as was the case with the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989. Oil can entail major ecological consequences while breaking down, so the seriousness of oil spills must not be downplayed just because the damage is no longer visible to the naked eye,” notes Hylland.

Moreover, scientists state that long-term effects of major oil spills, like the BP Deepwater Horizon spill that dumped five million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, can disrupt several generations of fish.