The Gulf Oil Spill Two Years Later

I have recently heard ads on TV and radio from various Gulf states, trying to get tourists to return, two years after a horrific oil spill. The ads say they're back to "business as usual", and I thought to myself that could not be true. It's not. It would be nice if millions of gallons of oil could spill into the Gulf and in two years time things would return to normal, but that is far from the truth. After all, it's been 23 years since the Exxon oil spill in Alaska, and the waters and wildlife have not yet completely recovered. The estimation by scientists is that it will be several decades before marine life and water have recovered. Several months ago, after a campaign to show the world how much BP has done to help cleanup the Gulf, a report describing the "unprecendeted" harm to dolphins in the area of the 2010 spill, a vast stretch of the Gulf south of the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coasts and the Florida panhandle. Carcasses of 675 dolphins were recovered in the region from February 2010 to February 2012, or roughly 337 each year. The average number of "strandings" annually in the northern Gulf from 2002 to 2009 was 74. And the 159 carcasses recovered in Louisian waters after the spill was eight times higher than the historical average. Additionally, nearly all of the live dolphins captured and studied in the Louisiana area were underweight, anemic and suffered from liver or kidney disease. About the same time, another study was released describing the damage to a coral colony at the bottom of the ocean seven miles from the site of BP's well blowout as unprecedented. The colony, usually thriving with marine life, was covered in brown muck. It was like a graveyard of corals. On the surface things may look like they're returning to normal, but beneath the surface-in some cases only a few feet below the sand and surf-lurk a host of hazards: thick tar mats, petrochemicals absorbed by marine life, and particles of oil broken down by chemical dispersants that have settled in the ocean bottom. Adverse effect, mostly invisible to the public, continue to be documented by scientists: killifish, a small fish often used for bat that are usually plentiful in marshy areas of the Gulf, are suffering from chronic illnesses as a result of absorbing toxic chemicals, insects like ants and crickets are disappearing from wetlands that still contain petrochemicals in soils and water, and at the bottom of the food chairn, zooplankton is still being found contaminated by traces of oil. BP recently paid many billions of dollars in fines to communities in the area to help clean up the spill. This is helpful, but federal and state bills must be enacted to make oil drilling safer. All the money in the world is never going to restore life in the Gulf to what it was. I remember how outraged I was when the oil spill occurred, and now it is 2 years later and BP has paid a lot of money in fines, but isn't anyone criminally responsible for the deaths of 11 men and ruination of marine life, water, plantlife, and communities that depend upon the Gulf to survive? You tell me.