Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Linked to Changes in Dolphin Gene Activity
An Anonymous Coward writes:
Dolphins living off the coast of Louisiana during and after the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 have genetic changes that could serve as a "canary in the coal mine" for future disease, according to researchers who analysed the animals' blood samples.
"[Gene expression] is a very, very sensitive indicator that can let us know something's going wrong long before we see illness or deaths in the population," says Jeanine Morey at GEL Laboratories in South Carolina [...].
The largest marine petroleum spill, the Deepwater Horizon disaster churned around 800 million litres of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico after an oil rig sank in April 2010. The impacts on wildlife were staggering, with fish, birds and marine animals dying in huge numbers. But the long-term consequences of the spill on wildlife are less understood, which led Morey to investigate how common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were faring.
She and her team analysed the health records and blood samples of 71 wild dolphins captured and released between 2013 and 2018. During hands-on exams, biologists assessed each animal's physical health, including their heart and lung function, and performed ultrasounds on pregnant females. The researchers lacked data on dolphins before the spill, so they compared more than 11,000 genes of individuals living in oil-impacted Barataria Bay, Louisiana, with those from dolphins living in Sarasota Bay, Florida, which was spared from the spill. Some of the Louisiana dolphins lived through the disaster, while others were born after.
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