There are so many oil spills that happen all over the world that we are no longer shocked by the sight of coastlines inundated with the gooey mess. Even the image of hapless birds and other marine creatures covered in a deadly blanket of oil does not shake us as much as it ought to. Oil spills have a terrible impact on the environment and the true extent of the damage they cause is yet to be fully understood.

What is very obvious at the very outset is that an oil spill kills a lot of marine creatures just by blocking their access to air. An oil slick is huge and unpredictable in its movements and it can strike the coast at any place leaving people unprepared for what will happen next. The beaches get covered with bodies of marine creatures washed ashore because they die of asphyxiation. Animals that manage to avoid the spill are very likely to starve to death because all their natural prey would have also died in the same cataclysm. Even if some birds are saved by humans it is unlikely that they will ever return to their natural habitat.

The damage caused by an oil spill does not end at just that. If the spill area is in the path of animal migration, then a whole new population of animals will get affected by the same slick. Birds and fish are especially susceptible to this as their migration paths have been fixed for millennia and there is no way that they can be induced to change their path. This multiplies the potential devastation and it is very difficult for animal and bird populations to recover from such as blow.

If this was not bad enough, scientists are now conducting studies on the long term impact of oil spills on marine life and are coming up with very frightening results. It is believed with a good deal of certainty that oil spills cause the levels of arsenic in the sea to rise considerably. This will lead to devastating effects all the way up the food chain. Unusually high levels of arsenic can kill of plants that are the base of the food chain. It can also directly kill animals because arsenic is a dangerous toxin.

Arsenic has another dangerous and far reaching effect and it is that it can lead to genetic mutations in animals that are exposed to high levels of it. This can lead to a whole lot of birth defects amongst fish and other marine creatures. The other worrying aspect of it is that this arsenic can be very easily passed on to humans, especially in populations that are dependent on the sea for their food.

The full extent of the negative effect that oil spills have on the marine environment, and by association, on human life, is still to be understood. We should prepare for more bad news from this quarter because the number of accidental oil spills does not seem to be reducing, whether it is from an oil rig or from a ship.

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Category: Society
Keywords: marine, marine environment, oil spills, marine life, marine creatures