Friday, April 01, 2011
Dead dolphin (photo: AP)
Scientists from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom claim the animal death toll from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may have been dramatically higher than officially reported.
About 100 dead whales, dolphins and other marine mammals were discovered in the Gulf, but the actual toll could be 50 times greater, based on calculations used to determine marine mortality counts.
“When people present the raw carcass counts without any caveats, without any qualifiers, they are implying we have a 100 per cent carcass recovery rate when we don’t have anything like that,” Rob Williams of the University of British Columbia told Postmedia News.
Historically, only 2% of ocean carcasses are ever found. Applying this standard to the known total of oil-spill-related fatalities, Williams and other experts determined that as many as 5,050 mammals may have perished.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
BP Spill's Impact Could Be Much Worse Than Expected (by Margaret Munro, Postmedia News)
Did BP Spill Kill Hundreds More Dolphins? (by Julia Whitty, Mother Jones)
Number of Dead Dolphins and Whales in Gulf May Be 50 Times Higher (by Rocky Kistner, Huffington Post)
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