Mountain Seer: BP Gulf Oil Spill Threatens "Sargassum" (Compelling Underwater Video) *Floating ecosystem within Gulf of Mexico*

Sunday, June 6, 2010

BP Gulf Oil Spill Threatens "Sargassum" (Compelling Underwater Video) Floating ecosystem within Gulf of Mexico

▲▲▲

The Sargassum: A Special Floating Ecosystem within the Gulf of Mexico

I was so taken by the video below I wanted to post it for the record. The video is an underwater journey to the "sargassum" in the Gulf of Mexico, about 22 miles south of Mobile Bay, Alabama. The commentary is A+ and provides a deep appreciation of this special floating world. The tragedy is the sargassum, floating seaweed aka Gulfweed along with its animal inhabitants, is directly threatened by the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill. As the sargassum drifts with the wind and currents, so does the oil.

This is the tragedy of the Gulf Oil Spill we do not see, the underwater and offshore destruction. The media images and videos are of the oil reaching the shores and/or the oil sheen and slicks offshore on top of the water. Yet this floating ecosystem is undoubtedly affected, even portions destroyed, long before the oil reaches the shore. At that point of destruction, the sargassum, the overall Gulf environment, the food chain itself, begins breaking down. The sargassum is an integral part of the Gulf of Mexico that other specific ecosystems within the Gulf are interrelated to. That is, the sargassum is interconnected to the rest off the water column in the Gulf. No doubt there will be short, intermediate, and long-term consequences if a significant amount of the surreal, and very special, sargassum is damaged.

A Day in the Sargassum

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO - Fish, dolphin, sea turtles, crabs and other creatures swam along a line of sargassum 22 miles south of Mobile Bay a week ago. While no oil was seen that day, clumps of oiled sargassum began washing up on Gulf Shores, Ala, beaches Saturday morning, June 5, 2010.

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Revisited: Seaweeds at Port Fourchon LA

Two months since their previous visit, Suzanne Fredericq, William Schmidt and Shana Callais from the Biology Department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette revisited the oil spill-impacted Fourchon Beach in Port Fourchon, Louisiana (Lafourche Parish) on July 27, 2010.