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shipperxFrom the Mobile-Register :
FORT MORGAN, Ala. -- A two-inch layer of submerged oil hugged portions of the Gulf seafloor off the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge on Friday, a week after a smothering layer of floating crude washed ashore there. [...] The Press-Register found a number of patches of submerged oil 40 to 100 feet off the beach, apparently collecting along rip currents and sandbars. The carcasses of sand fleas, speckled crabs, ghost crabs and leopard crabs were spread throughout the oil, a thick layer of the material caking the bodies of the larger crabs. Their claws looked as if they been turned into clubs made of oil. [...]
Dark patches seen in deeper water Friday might also have been oil, but exceptional numbers of large sharks meant diving down to investigate was not an option. Hammerhead, bull and other sharks were schooling around a boat anchored in just 6 feet of water outside the breaking waves.
Most of the sharks in the deeper water were 6 feet long or more. Smaller sharks could be seen inside the first sandbar, in one case in a school 27 strong. [...]
The Dauphin Island Sea Lab measured large areas of low oxygen water just off the beach at Fort Morgan last week, beginning in water around 20 feet deep. Monty Graham, a University of South Alabama scientist, theorized that the population of oil-consuming microbes had swelled, and those tiny animals consumed lots of oxygen.
Sea life begins to die if oxygen levels drop below 2 parts per million.
"We saw some very low oxygen levels, some below 1," said Graham, of testing he conducted aboard a Dauphin Island Sea Lab research vessel. [...] Graham said he believed that the low oxygen levels were responsible for reports of strange behavior among fish. "The low oxygen explains things we've been hearing, like reports of flounder swimming on the surface," Graham said.
P.S. - There was a snake in my front yard this morning! EEEEEeeeeeeeek!!!!!!!!! I was already a bit wary of pulling mint because it had gone so wild in my back yard, now knowing there could be a snake under it? EEeeeeeeeeek!
FORT MORGAN, Ala. -- A two-inch layer of submerged oil hugged portions of the Gulf seafloor off the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge on Friday, a week after a smothering layer of floating crude washed ashore there. [...] The Press-Register found a number of patches of submerged oil 40 to 100 feet off the beach, apparently collecting along rip currents and sandbars. The carcasses of sand fleas, speckled crabs, ghost crabs and leopard crabs were spread throughout the oil, a thick layer of the material caking the bodies of the larger crabs. Their claws looked as if they been turned into clubs made of oil. [...]
Dark patches seen in deeper water Friday might also have been oil, but exceptional numbers of large sharks meant diving down to investigate was not an option. Hammerhead, bull and other sharks were schooling around a boat anchored in just 6 feet of water outside the breaking waves.
Most of the sharks in the deeper water were 6 feet long or more. Smaller sharks could be seen inside the first sandbar, in one case in a school 27 strong. [...]
The Dauphin Island Sea Lab measured large areas of low oxygen water just off the beach at Fort Morgan last week, beginning in water around 20 feet deep. Monty Graham, a University of South Alabama scientist, theorized that the population of oil-consuming microbes had swelled, and those tiny animals consumed lots of oxygen.
Sea life begins to die if oxygen levels drop below 2 parts per million.
"We saw some very low oxygen levels, some below 1," said Graham, of testing he conducted aboard a Dauphin Island Sea Lab research vessel. [...] Graham said he believed that the low oxygen levels were responsible for reports of strange behavior among fish. "The low oxygen explains things we've been hearing, like reports of flounder swimming on the surface," Graham said.
P.S. - There was a snake in my front yard this morning! EEEEEeeeeeeeek!!!!!!!!! I was already a bit wary of pulling mint because it had gone so wild in my back yard, now knowing there could be a snake under it? EEeeeeeeeeek!
