Deepwater

Deepwater Sharks Are Threatened by Demand for Liver OilOne in seven species of deepwater sharks and rays is threatened with extinction because of the liver oil and meat trade and emerging fishing technologies that make it possible to catch deep-sea fishesBy David ShiffmanA bluntnose sixgill shark (Hexanchus griseus) off Puget Sound. The surging market for shark liver oil, found in products ranging from dietary supplements to cosmetics, is posing a major threat to deepwater shark species—those that dwell in the inky black…

Retrieval of the box corer containing Lake Erie sediments, from which the sediment cores were retrieved for this study, aboard the Research Vessel (R/V) Lake Guardian, which is owned by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). The R/V Lake Guardian is the largest research vessel in its fleet and conducts environmental monitoring across all five Great Lakes. Credit: Dr Euan Reavie Researchers at York…

A view of an adult female Aspiritus ovicorrugatus with a length of about 1.5 feet (0.46 meters). The top image is a fresh sample, while the bottom is a preserved sample. Image: White et al. (2023), Journal of Fish Biology, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0Bizarre egg cases at a museum led scientists to some serious nightmare fuel off the coast of northwestern Australia. The egg cases belonged to a previously misidentified species of deepwater catshark that is now called Apristurus ovicorrugatus, a creature that features milky white…

The Deepwater Horizon platform burns on April 21, 2010.Photo: Gerald Herbert (AP)The network of offshore oil and gas facilities in the U.S. is at serious and increasing risk of a potentially devastating cyberattack, a government watchdog says. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report last week finding that if a cyberattack successfully hits the nation’s offshore infrastructure, it could cause a catastrophe with impacts similar to those of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.According to the GAO, there…

Fiddler crabs build their burrows in beaches and in the muck of saltwater wetlands. Usually, those holes serve as the crabs’ home and provide each crustacean shelter and a quick escape from predators. But in some long-abandoned fiddler crab burrows along Louisiana’s Gulf coast, you’llfind something else: Residues of crude oil.The worst oil spill in human history unfolded over 87 days in 2010. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig, leased by fossil fuel giant BP and operated by drilling contractor Transocean, exploded on April 20…

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was not a short-lived catastrophe. Over 10 years after one of the largest environmental disasters in human history, a sticky oil residue still coats some marshland in the Gulf of Mexico, a new report reveals. Its impacts are still not fully understood.  In the months following BP's 2010 Deepwater calamity, desperate attempts were made to clean up all the crude oil that had spilled into the environment.Some oil was directly recovered. Some was burned, some was skimmed. Some was chemically…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain A new analysis of the aftermath of the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident suggests that, while the reputation of BP—the oil and gas company responsible for the event—declined through 2017, its stock market returns were not significantly affected in the mid- to long-term. William McGuire of the University of Washington in Tacoma and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS…