Big news for BP this week with the announcement the oil giant will be replacing current CEO Tony Hayward. Richard Charter, senior policy adviser for Defenders of Wildlife, tells the Associated Press that under a new CEO, BP must do more than scrub beaches. It should prepare to pay agencies to monitor turtles, whales, deep-sea coral and other threatened wildlife for at least another five years.
As BP moves toward a new tactic to stop the spill, dubbed the “static kill,” questions arise about the drilling “mud” used to plug the well. Oceans advocates have noted that companies regularly dump hundreds of thousands of gallons of this potentially highly toxic substance into the ocean, and we have no idea of its impact. Richard Charter, tells Kate Sheppard with Mother Jones that “drilling discharges have always been a dirty secret.”
What does the concentration of toxins in the water mean for wildlife? Richard says it’s hard to predict the impact the spill will have on wildlife, but it could be significant for the bluefin. “You interrupt that spawning event for bluefin tuna with a toxic oil spill and with dispersants that dissolve oil – and the egg of the bluefin is primarily oil-related – then, you could actually knock out a whole year-class of fish that was already in trouble,” he tells Public News Service.
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Wildlife & Wild Places
