Scientists Unsure?
This is the sort of thing that destroys credibility with the public, when the government and scientists refuse to state the obvious because there is “an ongoing investigation” or “there is a lawsuit pending”, but neglect to qualify their statements by stating, flat-out, that the lawsuit / investigation is keeping them from saying what they know.
UPDATE: The researchers working on the situation in the Gulf of Mexico are almost all under non-disclosure agreements with BP or the US government. Their funding and access is tied to their not saying or writing anything about what they discover. The few independents working on the problem are extremely limited in what they can do, as access to the area affected is strictly controlled, so they have to work on the fringes.
CNN reports that Scientists unsure why dolphins washing up dead
(CNN) — Dead baby bottlenose dolphins are continuing to wash up in record numbers on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and scientists do not know why.
Since February 2010 to April 2011, 406 dolphins were found either stranded or reported dead offshore.
The occurrence has prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to designate these deaths as an “unusual mortality event” or UME. The agency defines a UME as a stranding incident that is unexpected or involves a significant loss of any marine mammal population.
“This is quite a complex event and requires a lot of analysis,” said Blair Mase, the agency’s marine mammal investigations coordinator.
…
Scientists say they are equally concerned about the number of sea turtle strandings.
Similar to the dolphin deaths, an abnormally high number of turtles have been found either floating close to shore or washed up on shores in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
“The vast majority of these are dead, with states in moderate to severe decomposition,” said Barbara Schroeder, NOAA Fisheries national sea turtle coordinator.
The majority of them are Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, an endangered species since 1970. But some strandings included loggerheads, which are also endangered.
…NOAA Fisheries Stranding Program Coordinator Dr. Teri Rowles said tissue samples from both turtles and dolphins are being carefully documented due to the civil and criminal litigation ongoing with BP.
“We are looking at what is the impact of the oil spill and the response activities to the oil spill event, and what impact they had on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem,” she said. “We did not say that the dolphins have died because of the oil, just that they have come back with oil on them.”
Got it, even if they are covered in oil, they don’t want to say it is the result of billions of gallons of crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon.
I wonder how much radioactivity has to fall in the US before they consider the Fukushima reactors “a problem”.
7 comments
They died because their gills stopped working … because of lack of water in the oil..
In as much as dolphins [mammals] and turtles [reptiles] are both air breathers, it was more likely they were poisoned by oil or dispersant in their food, although the fumes from the oil at the surface could cause respiratory problems.
Bryan,
With all due respect (and I have deep respect for your insights and experiences), I ask you to at least consider the possibility that the fisheries scientists are saying that they do not know why the dolphins died because they do not *know* why the dolphins died.
[I note that you don’t know why they died, although you consider it “more likely” that they were poisoned by oil or dispersants.]
As a card-carrying scientist (Ph.D., Physics, MIT, 1991), I have seen that, in the culture of scientists, one does not assert that any particular mechanism (e.g., the BP oil spill and the massive application of dispersants) is the cause of a particular observation (e.g., record numbers of dolphin mortalities), until one can produce evidence that shows beyond reasonable doubt that *only* this particular cause is consistent with *all* of the evidence.
To a scientist, to “know” is a very high bar.
Best,
Jim Bales
😛 … I knew that. I’ll pretend somebody else said that.
Jim, the actual scientists do know, but they are working under no-disclosure contracts with the government. The people in the article are government managers.
These deaths have been going on for months, and many of the necropsies have been completed, including the toxicology scans, but the real scientists are not allowed to reveal the results or publish anything until after the cases are settled. All of the real information, the facts, are being withheld. You can understand it when the research is funded by private industry, and some of it is being done on BP’s money, but the government is doing the same thing.
Perhaps, I wasn’t clear enough, but everyone down here knows what is going on with the non-release of information, and we are really tired of being ignored. The only reason we know what we do, is because locals, especially fisherfolk, are finding the dead sealife and reporting it to local officials. The oil that is supposed to be gone keeps coming ashore, and there is a delay dealing with it, because all of the resources we had are gone.
The actual researchers are as frustrated as everyone else, especially those that have findings they want, or is some cases, need to publish. There are probably a lot of grad students in the marine sciences down here watching their doctorates getting pushed further into the future.
Bryan,
Your point is well taken — particularly since the quote you post from the link *says* “since February 2010”.
Sigh. I should read more carefully before posting!
Best,
Jim
Actually, Jim, I shouldn’t have used the article’s framing as “scientists” when we all know that the scientists, including a number of long-time, well-respected, Gulf specialists, can’t tell us what is going on. The people who are talking, are mostly unknown locally, so you can’t get the level of comfort you would from the people who have been drudging through the sand for decades to monitor the turtles, or were involved in the Gulf net ban to protect the turtles and dolphins.
There have been captive dolphin programs for decades down here, so their physiology is well known and well researched. There are a number of things in the Gulf that will cause a large jump in juvenile deaths, like Red Tide, so fisherfolk have a commercial interest in monitoring these events, and their livelihoods depend on knowing what is going on. If something in the Gulf is affecting dolphins, will it affect humans? In a tourist economy you have to know that at the local level.
I don’t know how they can expect good science when they can’t put “guesses” out there to be shredded by other researchers. Real research is a contact sport, and this is like training for a game that never gets played.