The Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico brought us those gut-wrenching pictures of pelicans covered in oil, but up to now there have been mercifully few reports of the disaster causing specific large-scale damage to the Gulf environment. That may be beginning to change: This week oceanographers report a vast swath of coral about seven miles southwest of the Deepwater Horizon site that are coated in brownish-black gunk and dying off. The team says the evidence points to the oil spill as the culprit. The scientists sailed aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research boat
Ronald H. Brown, and used remotely operated submersibles to survey the seafloor and find this devastation.
"The coral were either dead or dying, and in some cases they were simply exposed skeletons," said team member Timothy Shank of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "I've never seen that before. And when we tried to ...
