Since April 30, ten days after the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion at the gulf of Mexico, they have recorded 156 sea turtles deaths which the number is far high than usual this time of the year.
The oil spill had endangered the environment and a wide variety of marine life ranging from dolphins, fishes to blue crabs. Sea turtles are more vulnerable than any other marine life so far because of their current casualties and its proximity to endangering their habitat and nesting place.
Their source of food which they forage along the coast of Louisiana to Florida, is within the path of the oil slick.
“It lives its entire life cycle in the gulf which is why we are so critically concerned,” said Dr. Pat Burchfield, a scientist at the Glady’s Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, who has studied the turtle for 38 years.
It was an unfortunate event that such disaster have happened that costs the lives of people working on the rig and affect non marine life as well like the pelicans, seagulls, roseate spoonbills, egrets, terns, blue herons and other sea birds dependent to marine life.
Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia indicated that the oil could harm fish directly, and microbes used to consume the oil would also add to the reduction of oxygen in the water.
According to her, it could take the ecosystem years and possibly decades to recover. 