14 DAY TRIAL // Two years ago, the Gulf of Mexico witnessed the world's largest oil spill on open water. Now researchers argue that this unfortunate accident, coupled with several other environmental factors, caused a major decline in the dolphin population in this part of the world.
The study has just been published in the journal PloS ONE, and makes a case of how, most of the times, the dolphins that ended up washed ashore were relatively young specimens.
More precisely, as compared to previous years, six times more baby dolphins that were yet in their first month of life were found dead near beaches.
The fact that so many young dolphins were killed during this period needs to also be linked to a rather valuable piece of information: the oil spill coincided with these animals breeding season.
Marine biologists explain that the water pollution caused by the oil spill negatively impacted on these animals' food sources, and that it is also to blame for a weakening in their immune system.
To make matters even worse, the accidental oil spill followed after a relatively cold winter, which also took its toll on the general health of the dolphins living in the Gulf of Mexico.
As University of Central Florida's website informs us, Ruth Carmichael from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab argued, “When we put the pieces together, it appears that the dolphins were likely weakened by depleted food resources, bacteria, or other factors as a result of the 2010 cold winter or oil spill, which made them susceptible to assault by the high volumes of cold freshwater coming from land in 2011 and resulted in distinct patters in when and where they washed ashore.”
Not long ago, we reported on how the very same oil spill caused mutant and oddly-looking life forms to develop and grow in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore, it is safe to state that the environmental effects of such human-driven catastrophes are not only severe, but also long-term ones.