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More Alternative Energy, Less Dispersants: Meeting With Professor John Caruso

What should students be learning about to shape our futures? Alternative energies according to John Caruso, Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Tulane University. Caruso’s specialty is marine ichthyology and some of our group met Caruso and his wife, Pamela, for a lovely brunch meeting this past Sunday. We discussed how the oil spill’s impacts on deep-sea organisms have not yet surfaced (joke intended), because some effects may not yet be evident and some may take time to show.

As usual, our society’s focus has been on conspicuous species and recoveries. People are interested in attention-drawing charismatic animals, such as oil-covered pelicans, and anyone can go and actually see regrowth of oiled cord grass plants in marsh areas. Hearing these stories is accessible and interesting, however, we may be ignoring important, less attention-drawing organisms.

Comments in the media, such as this story on The Daily Mail, now question the validity of the BP oil spill classification as a disaster, because visible oil is now hard to find. Although sand on a beach may “look” clean and you can’t physically see oil or dispersed oil anymore, the Gulf ecosystems are not okay. First, as noted in The Daily Mail article, the effects of dispersants themselves on the Gulf ecosystems are not known. Second, we also don’t know what the effects of the dispersed oils and sunken oils will be as we move forward.

The dispersants, we’re told, break oil into smaller quantities thereby increasing the surface area of the oil, making it more difficult for us to see, but increasing the oil available to naturally occurring bacteria, whose metabolisms can often break down oil to less harmful substances. These bacteria are then food for organisms up the food chain (trophic pyramid), such as zooplankton, which then are food for larger organisms and so on up to the shrimp and fish that we like to eat. The harmful effects of the oil may be removed during the process, but possibly small amounts of harmful substances accumulate in the organisms that eat the bacteria and magnify with each trophic layer.

The dispersants, the dispersed oil, and/or the oil itself may potentially harm each trophic layer in the pyramid directly as well. Caruso described a finding (see the WWLTV link) by Dr. Erin Grey at Tulane, where crab megalope (larvae) have been found with orange blobs under their shells (here are stills from Dr. Grey’s video). The orange blobs have a hydrocarbon signature. Each year, the megalope, if successful, mature into juvenile crabs that usually show a pulse of return during September or October. Hundreds of millions of blue crab juveniles would be the usual level of return, so this level of return this year would bode well for the BP oil spill being slightly less of a disaster than expected.

The effects of the oil may be more obvious over time or may accumulate over time. Caruso told us about how Pacific Herring populations in Prince William Sound were increasing until the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and how the populations showed abnormalities since and still haven’t rebounded. Similarly, the Gulf Coast has herring relatives and other fish that Caruso fears may be negatively affected.

I am an optimist, but I await the return of the blue crabs and to see if the fish populations are okay as well as the entire ecosystem.

Now, why does Dr. Caruso want students to learn about alternative energies? Why not the ecosystem and trying to make less charismatic living things more charismatic to students? Moving to a less petroleum dependent society by understanding, improving, and embracing alternative energies will help remove potentially disastrous oilrigs, such as the other oilrigs in the Gulf of Mexico. So much to bring back to my students to think about…

By April Ann Fong

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