Oceans

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - Hundreds of fish washed up on the beach in Packery Channel, between Padre Island and Mustang Island, on Wednesday.

ksat.com - by Mary Claire Patton - September 13, 2018

Texas Parks and Wildlife tested the water along the beachfront following the fish kill, consisting mainly of gizzard shad, and identified a localized red tide bloom.

The water tested at a moderate level, indicating 100 to 1,000 cells per milliliter.

"Additional water samples were collected at Bob Hall Pier and Mustang Island State Park. Although no cells were observed at those sites, slight aerosol irritation was observed at Mustang Island State Park,” according to TPWD.

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CLICK HERE - Texas Parks & Wildlife - Current Status - Red Tide in Texas

nola.com - by Mark Schleifstein - July 28, 2017

Twelve years after Hurricane Ivan destroyed a Taylor Energy Co. platform in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government has finally started investigating how oil and gas that is still leaking from its wells damages natural resources. The flow of oil, "if left unchecked, could continue for 100 years or more," says the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the Interior Department agency that oversees gulf drilling.

Although the storm waylaid Taylor Energy's MC-20 Saratoga platform on Sept. 15, 2004, it was not until late 2016 that the government began its inquiry, and not until Thursday (July 27) that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed the investigation. 

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An older nearshore wellhead is shown off the coast of California in this undated photo. In state waters, California has resealed scores of its abandoned wells since the 1980s, but in federal waters, the official policy is out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Neither industry nor government checks for leaks at the more than 27,000 oil and gas wells abandoned in the Gulf of Mexico since the late 1940s. Abandoned wells are known sometimes to fail both on land and offshore. It happens so often that a technical term has been coined for the repair job: "re-abandonment."  Photo: California State Lands Commission / The Associated Press

nola.com - Associated Press - July 7, 2010

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one -- not industry, not government -- is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

Image: The Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.

inhabitat.com - April 21th 2015 - Charley Cameron

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the explosion that rocked the Deepwater Horizon rig, claiming 11 lives and sparking a 87 day-long, 200-million-gallon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, studies continue to reveal the devastating impact of the oil—and dispersants used in clean up—on marine life. Recent reports show that the dispersants were more damaging to corals than the oil itself, and continue to diminish shellfish and sea turtle populations, while large questions loom over the ongoing unexplained deaths of dolphins along the Gulf Coast. And, as the NRDC points out, it will take years, if not decades longer to fully understand the effects of the disaster.

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