Even though its been over a year since the tragedy of Deep Water Horizon, evidence of the environment-degrading contamination is still present in the wetlands of Louisiana. Some of our sites that were hard hit with oil bare a very tangible reminder of the fossorial fossil fuel gone surface.
This photo shows a thick, grey sludge of weathered oil blanketing the soil. At first, the oil seems nothing more than the anoxic, primordial paste that anchors the beds of marsh grass, but upon closer inspection, the sticky texture and chemical pungency are a dead giveaway that its oil.
Harshly-impacted sites bare the erosion scars of oil toxification. In some areas, large swaths of dead vegetation are present, in others matted beds of root matter, and in the worst, nothing but open water, with all the vegetation gone completely.
So far no one truly knows the role that the spill has played in the erosion of the marsh. Empirical evidence suggests that damage could be attributed to oil contamination, but we are not entirely sure of the natural erosion that takes place, so it’s hard to compare and make a definitive conclusion. It’s going to take years upon years of collecting data and samples to document and analyze the aftermath of what has so far been the largest oil spill in the history of our planet.