Six months ago, BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing eleven men and beginning an ecological catastrophe that flooded the Gulf of Mexico with approximately five million barrels of oil over the ensuing months. The effort to assess the damage continues, as does the tortuous claims process for the thousands of affected residents. Following news headlines that the oil had “largely disappeared” by August, nearly all of the Gulf waters closed to fishing have been reopened, and the Coast Guard has declared “very little recoverable oil” remains. However, the disaster is not over:
Just three days after the U.S. Coast Guard admiral in charge of the BP oil spill cleanup declared little recoverable surface oil remained in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana fishers Friday found miles-long strings of weathered oil floating toward fragile marshes on the Mississippi River delta.
New Orleans Times-Picayune photojournalist Matt Hinton confirmed the sightings in an overflight of Louisiana’s West Bay:
Because of the disaster, BP’s third quarter profit was only $4.6 billion.
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