Loop Current will magnify damage from Gulf spill

Dr. J. Christopher Haney, chief scientist at Defenders of Wildlife, has worked on marine wildlife, biological oceanography and oil spills for over 25 years. From 1993 to 2001, he served on the core science team that helped document impacts from and oversaw restoration of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. In 2002, he received an Outstanding Service Award from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Restoration Program. Here is Chris’ take on how the Gulf’s Loop Current will play into the ongoing Gulf oil disaster:

For me, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill is deju vu, only this mess is much better at camouflaging its immediate, full impacts than the Exxon Valdez catastrophe. And this one is deeply personal; the southeastern U.S. is where I got my start in marine science.

Chris has studied marine life of the Loop Current and Gulf Stream since 1981, when he took his first research cruise to document offshore hotspots of plankton and feeding seabirds. He was among the very first researchers ever to use satellite imagery to differentiate the key surface marine habitats needed by seabirds.

One big advantage to working in the Southeast is that good weather creates more cloud-free days. The ability to see and map the ocean surface there is almost unprecedented, which means we know a lot about the region’s ocean currents. These are strong currents with incredible power to extend and magnify environmental damages from this spill.

The Loop Current is the most important oceanographic feature in the eastern Gulf of Mexico,  flowing clockwise and penetrating westward and northward into the Gulf.  As it makes a big, slow clockwise rotation, it spawns warm eddies that separate from the main current and then slowly carry water far westward across the Gulf. Eventually the Loop Current rounds the Florida Keys before joining the Gulf Stream’s northward journey (see an animation of an entire year of Loop Current meandering).

You can see the Loop Current has the clout to spread oil in two directions. If oil gets trapped in any of the warm core eddies that are shed from the Loop Current, oil will threaten the western Gulf, including Padre Island and other beaches of Texas and eastern Mexico. If, or more likely when, oil enters the main body of the Loop Current, all bets are off – the powerful Gulf Stream can take oil, mousse or tar balls all the way to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a site with an unparalleled diversity of whales, dolphins and seabirds in the western Atlantic.

Edges of the Loop Current and borders to other oceanographic features are especially attractive to foraging seabirds. As the summer goes on, black and sooty terns, band-rumped storm-petrels, and masked boobies, seabirds that essentially come to the Gulf from all over the Atlantic Ocean, will be trying to feed in the very places that most concentrate oil.

In 2005 Chris and Defenders helped found the Atlantic Marine Bird Conservation Cooperative, a group of academic, government, and non-government conservationists all devoted to helping marine birds, like the imperiled Black-capped Petrel (Pterodroma hasitata).

Damage to any species of marine wildlife is wrenching. We are hoping against hope that this oil does not get as far as the northern Gulf Stream. The entire planet’s population of this scarce petrel uses only these waters to feed.