RESEARCH PUBLISHED in the scientific journal PLoS ONE provides
troubling new information about the effects of the BP oil spill
on the Gulf of Mexico. It suggests that big changes took place
in microscopic organisms in the months after the spill, and that
those changes could have significant impacts in the years to
come. The research, while worrisome, isn’t by itself cause for
alarm. Rather, it reaffirms the need for continued study of the
Gulf, which can be spurred along by funding from the newly
passed RESTORE Act. When the Deepwater Horizon explosion
occurred in 2010, killing 11 people, officials and residents
feared that beaches and marshes from Florida to Louisiana would
be decimated by a flood of oil. When that scenario didn’t
materialize, some people leaped to the other extreme, concluding
that there would be no effects from oil and dispersants at all,
other than the economic fallout. The truth may lie somewhere in
between, though we won’t know for years, maybe even decades.
Research like the study publ