Oiled birds and dead turtles have been washed up on the shore. What a disaster, and this oil will travel, causing all kinds of damage to sea life and their habitat.
The oil is spreading through one of America's richest and most fragile natural habitats.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear...acts-of-an-oil-disas
Nearly three-quarters of all US waterfowl – and all its 110 species of migratory neotropical songbirds – use Louisiana's three million acres of wetlands to rest or nest.
Worse, this is the most vital season for the Gulf's fisheries, which also largely depend on them. Oysters have just started to reproduce, speckled brown trout have started spawning, shrimp have just begun to grow, to name but a few. Nine out of 10 of all the region's marine species rely on wetlands at some point in their life cycle, and these are mainly in Louisiana.
During these very two weeks, 25 million songbirds can cross the Gulf each day, mostly making their first landfall in the wetlands.
And there is an even worse prospect – that the wetlands, 40 per cent of the US total, may perish altogether if the slick gets really big.
The concern now is that grasses that hold the whole system together could be smothered by the oil and die: without them all that would remain is mud, to be washed away within a year. And the wetlands are not just vital for fish and fowl, but provide a vital buffer against storms and hurricanes: if they had been healthier, it is accepted, Katrina would probably have been less damaging.