Soon after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in April 2010, Paul Montagna, a Texas A&M marine ecologist, was given a hurry-up-and-finish contract by BP to go into the black waters to find out any harm, of the country’s biggest oil disaster, was being done to the barely understood organisms that form the foundation of the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem. He came up with 200 samples. Before the research was ended, he’d only had time to analyze 58. BP was eager to begin negotiating a settlement with the U.S. government over ballooning claims. In April 2016 the case was settled for $8.8B - largest in history. But, it wasn’t until this year he finally finished his work. “The good news for BP is they got away with something … the actual impact was at least twice, if not 10 times larger” than the settlement documents were based on, Montagna said in February at a conference in Tampa, Fla. A full analysis of his work was published in the journal PLOS One in June showing analysis of all of those samples showed damage to seafloor organisms stretching at least 124 square miles - nearly two times larger than the 66-square-mile footprint described in the abbreviated report Montagna turned over for the disaster’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment. NRDA helped determine how much BP owed for the harm done. (Source: NOLA.com 07/31/20) https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_944018de-c776-11ea-a8f8-9738b904d580.html Those tiny sea creatures of the Gulf. https://www.nola.com/news/collection_7355a2de-d369-11ea-bc2e-b3ef5b406237.html
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