wwltv.com: New study finds microorganisms along Gulf Coast impacted by BP oil spill
Posted on July 10, 2012 at 6:27 PM / Updated yesterday at 6:42 PM
Maya Rodriguez / Eyewitness News
Email: mrodriguez@wwltv.com | Twitter: @mrodriguezwwl
GRAND ISLE, La.– To the casual observer, the beaches along the Gulf Coast look back to normal, more than two years after oil marred the shoreline. In a new study, though, scientists sampled the sand and sediment, taking a closer look at the microorganisms there.
“You can think of them as forming the basis of any eco-system,” said Holly Bik of the University of California, Davis, one of the study’s lead researchers. “So, they really underpin all the food webs in ecosystems.”
Bik personally collected samples from Grand Isle, looking for microbial life: tiny worms, crustaceans, amoebas and fungi, which are not visible to the naked eye, but crucial to the food chain. What she and other scientists discovered was a major shift.
“It was very low diversity, there were very few things living there,” Bik said. “It looked like they represented a disturbed habitat.”
Loyola University biology professor Dr. Jim Wee did not participate in the study, but looked at its findings. He said microorganisms are often overlooked because they can be harder to relate to.
“There was a the shift in the composition or the diversity,” Dr. Wee said. “Because we don’t ordinarily see them, we often don’t take the microbial organisms as seriously as we should, in terms of how they affect our environment.”
However, a change in microorganisms can have a huge effect. After the Exxon-Valdez spill in Alaska, a similar change in microorganisms came before a collapse in the herring fisheries there. Whether something similar could happen here is still not clear. UNO Biological Sciences Department Chair Dr. Wendy Schluchter did not take part in the study, but said this latest one shows more research is needed.
“Many people want to know– what’s the immediate effect? And obviously, we don’t know,” Dr. Schluchter said. “It’s going to take a long time to study this– to really understand what the effects are.”
The scientists focused mainly on Grand Isle and Dauphin Island, Alabama in these results. They collected more samples from Louisiana to Florida, though, and additional research is ongoing at Auburn University. To see the current study, click here
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http://msbusiness.com
Mississippi Business Journal: Study: Oil spill’s impact could take years to become apparent
by Associated Press
Published: July 10th, 2012
GULF OF MEXICO — New research by an Auburn University professor and other scientists suggests that the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill could have significant impacts on microscopic life that might not become apparent for years.
Auburn professor Ken Halanych and scientists from the University of New Hampshire, the University of California Davis Genome Center, and the University of Texas at San Antonio, published their work last month in the scientific journal PLoS ONE.
The Press-Register of Mobile (Ala.) reports researchers collected soil samples from five spots around Alabama’s Dauphin Island and Mobile Bay, as well as a persistently oiled beach in Grand Isle, La.
What they found, according to their report, was that diverse communities of microscopic animals had given way to fungi, some of which are associated with oil spills.
Complete URL: http://msbusiness.com/2012/07/study-oil-spills-impact-could-take-years-to-become-apparent/
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Press-Register: Gulf oil spill had dramatic impact on microscopic life, study suggests
Published: Tuesday, July 10, 2012, 6:00 AM Updated: Tuesday, July 10, 2012, 3:04 PM
By Brendan Kirby, Press-Register
MOBILE, Alabama — Months after BP PLC capped the gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico and crews had cleared oil from coast, Alabama’s beaches looked like they had returned to normal.
New research by an Auburn University professor and other scientists, though, suggests that significant changes had taken place in creatures too small to be seen by the naked eye. Those changes, professor Ken Halanych said, bear further study and could have big impacts that might not become apparent for years.
“When the samples were taken, there wasn’t any obvious oil on the beaches, wasn’t anything obvious to indicate that the oil spill had happened,” he said. “When you went outside and looked at it, it looked rather normal. There was clearly (microscopic) community change and hidden effects.”
Halanych and scientists from the University of New Hampshire, the University of California Davis Genome Center, and the University of Texas at San Antonio, published their work last month in the scientific journal PLoS ONE. The researches collected soil samples from 5 spots around Dauphin Island and Mobile Bay, as well as a persistently oiled beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana.
The researchers collected the first set of samples after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig had exploded in April 2010 but before oil reached the coast. They then compared those samples with soil collected at the same locations in September of that year.
What they found, according to the academic paper, was that diverse communities of microscopic animals had given way to fungi, some of which are associated with oil spills.
“Based on this community analysis, our data suggest considerable (hidden) initial impacts across Gulf beaches may be ongoing, despite the disappearance of visible surface oil in the region,” they wrote.
Potential Ripple Effect
Halanych said the long-term effects are unknown but potentially dramatic, since the organisms that lost ground after the spill form the base of the food chain. He pointed to the collapse of the herring population in Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. That collapse, which did not occur until several years after the 1989 spill, has been traced to changes at the microscopic level.
“When you change the ecosystem, all these things have a ripple effect,” he said. “Some of these effects can take years to develop.”
Patricia Sobecky, the chairwoman of the Biological Sciences Department at the University of Alabama, said the study sheds new light on a Gulf environment that many scientists contend has received too little attention.
“What they reported is completely in line with what you would expect,” said Sobecky, who was not part of the research. “How to interpret that is going to the tricky part.”
Sobecky was part of a team that expects to publish its own paper in PLoS ONE in the coming weeks. She said her work focused on the impact of the oil spill on microscopic life in salt marshes near Bayou La Batre.
Sobecky said the work of Halanych and others is important for establishing a baseline to track changes over time.
“I think it will ready us for future events,” she said.
One the one hand, Sobecky said, the presence of microorganisms attracted to hydrocarbons may have helped break down the oil faster. Whether those organisms remain and what the effect will be is harder to tell, she said, adding that other large-scale oil spills — like the Valdez — do not offer a conclusive explanation because the environments are so different from the Gulf.
“What does that mean? Is it more resilient? Less resilient?” she said.
John Valentine, the director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, said other research he has reviewed indicates that microbes harmed by the oil spill had rebounded by the end of the year.
“It was pretty clear in the microbial community that there was a pretty dramatic effect immediately after the oil spill,” he said. “It would be interesting to know if (Halanych and his partners) persisted beyond September 2010.”
More research needed
Halanych said he did, in fact, collect samples a full year after the oil spill. But he said he has not yet analyzed the results. He said other research suggests that changes in bacteria reverted to normal conditions fairly quickly after the spill. But he said that does not necessarily mean that microscopic animals will behave the same way.
He agreed that more research is needed. He said funding for his project from a National Science Foundation grant has run out, but he or others might be able to get renewed support if a follow-up paper shows interesting results.
“What this research shows is we have to keep watching,” he said.
Halanych said he and his team used hand-held tools to scoop up soil at the same depth in different locations. They sent those samples to a lab in New Hampshire, where researchers performed a genetic sequencing. Scientists also made observations with microscopes.
He said large animals and fish either moved or died when the massive oil slick reached them. His team focused on the tiny creatures that live between the sand grains.
“They’re not going to be able to get up and swim and move,” he said.
After the spill, fungi and organisms associated with hydrocarbons were dominant, Halanych said.
“A lot of these things might have been there (before) but in very low numbers, and the conditions didn’t favor them” he said.
The question that cannot be answered without more research, Halanych said, is whether the new species will remain without the oil.
“I would hope they would shift back, but we need the data to tell us for sure or not,” he said.
Special thanks to Richard Charter