One year ago today, April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded at 9:45 p.m. CDT. Eleven workers were killed in the blast and the resulting oil spill took three months to stop. It was the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. Oil tar balls still wash ashore along the Gulf.
How much crude oil was spilled? USA Today reports, "Federal officials estimated the amount at more than 200 million gallons of crude, while acknowledging the estimate could be off by plus or minus 20 million gallons." The mystery is: Where did it all go? Apparently, most of it did not reach the surface. A sizable amount, a cloudy dark mass, is drifting below the surface. The seabed around the site is also a dead zone. The long term affect is unknown.
One year ago, the oil that surfaced impacted thousands of species, but perhaps none more than the brown pelican. Will their population recover?
Here are two more pelican photos by my friend Wayne Mallinger.
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