New study reveals dramatic population drops in fish, cephalopods and more after the Deepwater Horizon spill
Marine life in the Gulf of Mexico plummeted by about 60% after BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and has still not fully recovered, according to a new study.
The April 2010 explosion of an offshore drilling unit 50 miles off the Louisiana coast triggered the largest marine oil spill in history, releasing 134m gallons of oil into the ocean. According to the study published Monday in PNAS, the disaster – which also killed 11 people and injured 17 others – led to the “sudden, severe and persistent declines in the abundance” of marine life for more than a decade.