Zombie shrimp. The worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history that will take decades to recover from.
Looking at the abundance and size of Louisiana white and brown shrimp before and after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a scientific paper published Wednesday said the amount of shrimp actually increased in local estuaries through 2011 and that the size of that shrimp remained unaffected.
By 2012, the authors wrote, the amount of shrimp in the once heavily-oiled areas they monitored had returned to normal levels.
The study, published in the online scientific journal PLOS One, was conducted by Joris L. van der Ham and Kim de Mutsert, scientists with George Mason University’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy.
De Mutsert and Van der Ham began studying Louisiana shrimp immediately following the oil spill as postdoctoral researchers in Louisiana State University fisheries professor James Cowan’s lab.
Van der Ham and De Mutsert’s study compared abundance and size of shrimp in estuaries that were heavily impacted by the spill with minimally-impacted estuaries, both before and after the spill.
It found that shrimp actually was more abundant in areas heavily impacted by the oil spill.[…]
Most recently, a Times-Picayune review of federal preliminary catch data found that Louisiana shrimp catch in August was higher than any prior August dating back to 2007. That marked the third straight month that Louisiana shrimp catch was significantly above historic averages.