The Oil Spill Has Left The Camera Frame

An oil spill does not become an ex-oil spill because the television camera can no longer find a dramatic patch of it. The Gulf of Mexico has been conducting a rather long experiment in the difference between no longer visible and no longer happening.

AP reports new research finding major, lasting losses of animals in the Gulf's deep-water twilight zone after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The scientists compared sampling after the 2010 spill and continued tracking populations. This is not a complete before-and-after census: the area had not been studied before the spill. That limitation matters. So does the fact that the animals have not obligingly returned to match the disappearance of the headline.

Follow the mechanism. Oil and gas entered the water. Pollutants were found in the eggs of surviving animals. According to the researchers, subsequent generations became more compromised. The incident therefore did not require a new explosion every year to keep doing damage. It had discovered reproduction. Corporate crisis communications must find that deeply inconsiderate.

The scientists tested other possible explanations, including temperature, oxygen and food availability. Those changes did not track the decline. Lead researcher Tracey Sutton says the spill is the most likely cause, while acknowledging that his team cannot prove an exact causal link. That is how a serious finding sounds: evidence, an explanation and the limits of the explanation. Quite different from announcing that the water looks nicer and letting the adjective handle the rest.

Then comes the particularly ugly engineering problem. Dispersants break oil into smaller droplets. Smaller droplets can increase exposure for creatures deeper in the water. Less conspicuous at the surface can mean more available to the animals underneath. The ocean has declined to organize itself around the preferred camera angle.

AP reports that fish counts in the studied area fell 63.5 percent between the year after the spill and 2015, with low populations persisting in later sampling. The study describes interconnected life moving through different depths. Predators dive; smaller animals rise. You cannot draw a neat horizontal line through the sea and tell the consequences to remain on their assigned floor. Fish are notoriously poor at observing corporate boundaries.

BP says the accident changed the company and that it made changes intended to prevent another such event. That response belongs in the account. It does not make recovery a completed event. A promise about preventing the next failure and a measurement of the last failure answer different questions. Both can exist without one being allowed to delete the other.

We have examined environmental protection that leaves room for the destruction it names. Here the problem is what happens after the spectacular failure has become an anniversary. The machinery of harm is still operating through a connected ecosystem, while public attention has moved to fresher machinery.

If your test for recovery is that the water photographs well, congratulations: you have restored the photograph. The researchers brought nets, sonar and genetic evidence. It turns out the missing animals were not waiting for a better publicity strategy.