Media contacts:
Mote Marine Laboratory: Hayley Rutger, 941-374-0081, hrutger@mote.org
Vickie Chachere, University of South Florida, vchachere@amin.usf.edu
Aileo
Weinmann, National Wildlife Federation, 202-797-6801, weinmanna@nwf.org
Gulf
Oil Spill Symposium Concludes with
Recommendations for Gulf-Wide Response
Sarasota,
FL (November 10, 2010) - Researchers wrapped up a national symposium
on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Tuesday with recommendations for
long-term
responses to the spill.
The major recommendation is for a unified research and
monitoring effort that will be able to quickly detect the spill’s
effects as
they arise and give management agencies the information they need to
implement
changes to deal with effects as soon as they are detected. Such a
unified
system will require a much more detailed understanding of how the Gulf
of Mexico lives and breathes, symposium participants
said.
“Right now there is no agency that pulls together and coordinates all
the information we need about the Gulf,” said Dr. Michael Crosby, senior
vice
president for research at Mote Marine Laboratory. “Scientists at
different
institutions might be collecting different pieces of data — but if we
don’t put
those together, we could miss the big picture until populations crash.”
The symposium, titled “Oil Spill-Induced Trophic Cascades in
the Gulf: Exploring Impacts, Research Needs and Management Responses,”
was
co-sponsored and organized by Mote, the National
Wildlife Federation and the University of South Florida
College of Marine
Sciences. The symposium convened approximately 40 experts from
fishery management councils,
local, state and federal resource management agencies, industry,
academic and
independent marine research institutions and environmental
non-government
organizations at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla.
Long-term problems caused by the spill are likely to include damaging
ripple
effects through the marine food web that underpins the health of the
Gulf of
Mexico. These so-called trophic cascades are chain reactions that can
occur
when a single key species or multiple species in an ecosystem experience
stress
or declines in population size, which in turn lead to dramatic shifts in
the
overall balance of entire ecosystems on regional scales. The phenomenon
is one
that many people associate with an ecosystem losing its top, or
keystone,
predators. For instance, when the Pacific Ocean
had a decline in the sea otter population, it allowed their prey – sea
urchins
– to overrun and destroy algae beds that supported numerous other marine
species. Many of those species, in turn, declined.
During the workshop, participants focused on four key
questions:
- Has
the oil spill caused a significant migration of large pelagic
(open-ocean
dwelling) species to environments where they’re not typically
found?
- Will
spatial redistribution of large pelagic species cause massive
shifts in
ecosystem dynamics, leading to negative ecological and
socio-economic
impacts?
- Has the
oil spill caused sub-lethal (negative effects that don’t kill an
animal)
and/or delayed population level responses in other keystone marine
species
—from plankton to vertebrates.
- If any
of these situations are occurring, what specific research,
monitoring and
resource management initiatives are needed to respond, minimize and
recover from such impacts?
Effectively studying and managing Gulf ecosystems means
linking many puzzle pieces together, participants said. These include
life
cycles of fish and numerous other organisms, natural ocean and weather
patterns, patterns of oil movement, effects of oil on particular
organisms and
other human impacts the Gulf has absorbed over the years, among many
other
things.
“A key finding of this workshop is that we could see trophic
cascades starting not just with large, open-ocean species, but also with
a wide
variety of species throughout the Gulf — so we need a risk-management
effort
throughout the Gulf,” Crosby said.
Many large sharks and other top predators may be so depleted by fishing
and
other pressures that their unusual movements wouldn’t cause trophic
cascades,
participants said. But these species could decline if the spill impacts
their
health and reproduction, and “lower” species on the food web — such as
plankton
— could be starting points for cascades.
Which species could face long-term changes? The list is
long: shrimp, menhaden, blue crabs, various types of plankton, coral
reefs,
sargassum algae, seabirds, top predators such as large sharks, tuna and
dolphins, sea turtles, mackerel, tarpon, other key sport fish and many
others.
Addressing oil effects for these species means studying
everything from tiny changes in their DNA to large-scale changes in
their population
size, migration patterns and the habitats where they feed, breed and
bear
young.
Programs are in place to study impacts on some these
systems, but research is lacking in many areas and is also fragmented.
To address the need for a more complete response, symposium participants
called
for a new Gulf-wide response group involving research institutions,
state and
federal governments, non-government organizations, and people who live
and work
on the Gulf.
Through this new effort, scientists would pool many kinds of ecological
data to
look for long-term problems related to oil and other environmental
impacts, and
then would provide direct feedback to marine resource managers to
provide early
warnings of trophic cascades and other problems.
“This symposium is very important for us because we don’t
believe the oil disaster is over,” said John Hammond, regional executive
director of National Wildlife Federation. “We do believe that there are
some
very specific scientific studies that need to be done to show us where
the
impact is and where the appropriate interventions ought to be. It’s
essential
to support ongoing research and monitoring efforts to determine the full
repercussions of the spill and to inform restoration strategies and
future
policy decisions.”
Other recommendations from the symposium
include the need to
create:
- Detailed,
science-based models of how oil could affect the Gulf
- Long-term
research sites to monitor for future oil spill effects and other
environmental problems
- Key
research programs such as tagging of shark, tuna, billfish, sea
turtles
and other large open-ocean species
- Funding
streams for crucial research and monitoring efforts
“The decisions made in managing this vital and fragile
ecosystem must be led by the most advanced and comprehensive scientific
research our nation can muster if this great natural resource is to
fully
recover,” said Dr. William Hogarth, dean, College
of Marine Science, University of South Florida.
Recommendations from the symposium will be put into a formal
report for the public, government officials and the scientific community
that
will be distributed in January 2011.
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