The Gift That Keeps On Giving

It has been over a year now since BP's Deepwater Horizon well flooded the Gulf of Mexico with 5 million barrels of oil but the horrible gift BP gave to the Gulf just keeps on giving in so many ways; not the least of which is the alarmingly high death rate among Bottlenose Dolphins. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported that over 150 dolphin carcasses have washed up on Gulf coasts since January. Scientists attribute this unusually high number directly to the effects of the BP oil spill and the dispersants used to clean it up. And who knows how many other dolphins have died as a result of this disaster but whose bodies have sunk to the oil slime covered sea floor.

BP executives and shareholders have moved on, regaining their six figure bonuses and dividend payments respectively, but sadly dolphins continue to die. And while BP executives measure time in fiscal years, and their shareholders mark the passage of their lives in decades, the time it will take to repair the damage that BP has done to the once pristine waters of the Gulf of Mexico can be measured in centuries.