The true scale of the disaster is still being studied, but the National Wildlife Federation has published a report on the impacts on biodiversity.
Just a few days ago, on 20 April, a grim anniversary fell: that of the environmental disaster caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, the worst in American history. It has now been five years since the oil platform owned by British Petroleum (BP) exploded while drilling a well at a depth of 1,500 metres in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The accident killed eleven people and caused approximately 780 million litres of oil to spill into the sea. The leak continued until 15 July 2010, when it was finally stopped. The true damage caused and the effects of the disaster are still being studied; "given the considerable quantity of oil that remained on the floor of the gulf and its unprecedented dispersal, it will take years or even decades to know the real environmental impact," reads the report by the National Wildlife Federation published last March.
Yet the suffering that the oil spill has caused, and will continue to cause, to wildlife is plain to see. According to the report, approximately 12 per cent of the Gulf of Mexico's brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) population died as a result of the accident. Surviving birds remain at risk because they can ingest oil while preening their feathers or by eating contaminated fish.
Prolonged exposure to oil can cause serious long-term damage, such as cardiac abnormalities and reduced fertility, which would lead to a collapse in reproduction rates. The platform explosion also significantly accelerated the erosion of the coastlines and marshland areas in which the pelicans live.
The study also assessed the impact on other animal and plant species such as the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), sargassum (Sargassum), the seaside sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus), corals, oysters and Kemp's ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys kempii), considered the rarest sea turtle in the world.
Dolphins have shown a mortality rate four times higher than average and face a high likelihood of contracting lung disease, while the number of nests laid by Kemp's ridley turtles has decreased by 35 per cent since 2010, the year of the disaster.
Setting aside the effects on humans, according to the research "the workers and volunteers who took part in the clean-up and helped save ecosystems and thousands of animals now face a greater risk of contracting diseases such as cancer."