The Gulf Coast runs from Brownsville, Texas north and east through the bayous and rivers of Louisiana – past the coast of Mississippi and the sugar white beaches of Alabama – past Pensacola’s emerald waters, Apalachicola, Big Bend and around down south past Tampa to Key West. The Gulf Coast provides a nation hungry for seafood with shrimp, crabs, oysters and finfish.
All of these species rely on the marshes, bayous and reefs of the Coast for survival at some point their lives. If they could talk, what would these species say to us – the humans who have put their lives in jeopardy?
We the blue crabs and shrimp go through several larval stages before we reach the mature form you’re familiar with. Our larvae are small, delicate and environmentally sensitive.They use the marshes for food and shelter from predators. Your oil is breaking down and using up the oxygen that our children need to survive. It coats or smothers them. The oil forces the fish that use our larvae for food into the few uncontaminated area that are left to us and we become a meal for them. These problems are bad enough but the oil will stay in the marshes for many breeding seasons causing us yet unknown problems.
We the oysters sit on our reefs, watch the oil come and can’t move out of the way. We are filter feeders and before humans came into our world with their impacts on our environment we once filtered the entire water column of places like Mobile Bay in less than a week. When the oil from the leaking well arrives it is washed onto our reefs by the tides and wind and smothers many of us. As with our brothers the crabs, the oil decomposes and uses up the oxygen in the water making it unavailable to us and our larvae that need it for survival and we die. The reefs, our homes may not be free of oil for years to come and even if they’re free of it by next year we wouldn’t be able to reproduce because we’re dead.
We the fish, unlike crabs and oysters, are made up of many species of all sizes, shapes and colors. Our life cycles are varied but one thing we have in common with our brother species is that we need the marshes. Our eggs and children suffer they same fate as the others but as adult fish we can move out of the way but where will we go? The oil is everywhere. Some of us spawn in the Gulf and our eggs wash in with the tide. Others reproduce in bays, creeks and rivers. Some spawn in or near the marshes. Problem is that the oil in the marshes can’t be completely removed. Oil will continue to leech out with the tides and rain over the months and years to come continuing to kill us. Biologists don’t know exactly what the long-term chronic effects of this will be but it can’t be good. The beaches can be cleaned, sand replaced and they’re made whole again, the marshes can’t.
If the coastal species could leave us a message in the sand maybe it would go something like this.
Why do you kill us?
Animals asked the humans.
It is our nature.
Think Global – Act Local!