Gulf seafood "horribly deformed"

Eyeless shrimp. Fish afflicted by sores. Crabs without claws or hard shells. Bizarre deformities are becoming common in seafood from the Gulf, according to Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, and pollution caused by the 2010 BP oil spill is the likely cause.

Al Jazeera's Dahr Jamail:

The [oil] dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP's disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.
Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic - able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus - and carcinogenic.

Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists [Al Jazeera]

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suburbanhick

“Nothing to see here… Move along….”
- PhosPhorious
  
  Nothing to see. . . especially if you’re a shrimp with no eyes!
  - Guest
    
    move along… assuming you can move
  - Gunker
    
    Would that make it a shrmp ?
- Cowicide
  
  I wonder how conservatives are going to try and spin this one? We’ve already been told by right wingers that the spill was no big deal and all us whiney progressives were simply uneducated on the issue.
  - EH
    
    Seafood is for liberals. Have a nice clean steak.
    - Cowicide
      
      I forgot, eating seafood is one step away from being a dreaded vegetarian… and that’s a gateway to worse things like being a vegan… and next thing you know you’re a homosexual drug addict who hates Reagan and rapes children… and then (dare I say the word) you might become a (gasp) atheist or agnostic or something else evil and non-Christian.
      
      It all starts with the shrimp.
      - http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan
        
        No wonder God hates them.
      - IronEdithKidd
        
        I’m an atheist pescetarian. You may call me Beelzebub.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MFBF27RUIMMRY3WGW327JHWVOM john
      
      I like those core right wingers. Eating red meat increases the chances of having cancer. I try to stay away from the seafood from the Gulf coast.
  - Liam Kimbell
    
    This won’t become part of the news cycle. The conservatives won’t say anything.
    - Cowicide
      
      Yeah, if they can sweep it under the toxic rug, they’ll certainly try. I guess it’s up to the rest of us (who aren’t far right wing) to spread the facts (like usual).
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Justin-Forposting/100002531076048 Justin Forposting
    
    Easy.
    
    Show me a shrimp from anywhere that doesn’t already look “horribly deformed”, you can’t cause it’s a weird looking creature. A weird looking tasty creature, just the way god made ‘em. It’s the ugly that makes them so scrumptious. Have you tasted one of the new shrimp, one of the modern shrimp, one of the uglier and therefore tastier shrimp? No, of course not cause the liberals won’t let you try one, worried about animal rights and toxins and so on. If the nanny state would just let the American People take responsibility for themselves and their own risk taking, then the free market could start selling 21st century shrimp and the gulf seafood industry would not only be back on its feet, but also adding jobs at a critical time. ”Critical time” being anytime during the job-hating presidency of Obama.
    
    oh, I’m a little disturbed at how easy that was.
    - Cowicide
      
      http://www.osborneink.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/super-clap.gif
    - rtb61
      
      That’s right, let’s turn everything into an experiment. Who needs those food regulations, if you don’t die from botulism than it’s safe to eat if you do die then you stop buying and the company goes bankrupt, hyuck, hyuck.
      Who needs surgeons licences, if the surgeon kills all their patients, then he has none and goes bankrupt, hyuck, hycuk.
      Pilots licence, don’t need that regulation, taking off is easy landing, well if they crash, problem solved no more pilot, hyuck, hyuck.
      Let the free market sort itself out, there are plenty of men, women and children to try and die, why bother with regulations they just suck up God ordained profits.
      If the moron state would only just eat shit and die, oh wait, they are doing that as we speak.
MarcVader

“The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared”

Riiiight.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2007428,00.html
- Cowicide
  
  If ya won’t spend the money to clean it and/or properly regulate it, simply downplay it. Seems to do the trick on people without proper critical thinking skills (a.k.a. many Americans).
  - MarcVader
    
    We live in a system that rewards non-critical thinking. So it’s not a big surprise that a journalist looking for ‘experts’ will end up interviewing so-called scientists (I’d prefer to call them scientific workers) whose grasp of the complexity of the marine ecosystem is well, shallow. The birds, turtles and so on that were washed ashore dead during this spill were comparably few and comparably little oil reached the beaches and marshes. So the ‘experts’ working in their niche say: “Hey it wasn’t as bad as we feared”…
    
    Meanwhile the biggest, deepest oil spill in US history though plugged probably continues to poison the very base of the complex marine food chain with that really diverse cocktail of toxic hydrocarbons. Hey and let’s not forget the tons and tons of dispersing agents. All these chemicals continue to react in unforeseen ways inside and outside organisms.
    
    And after all we know more about the moon than we know about the deep ocean. Now, oopsie, we’re seeing these deformed creatures, so now the contamination has arrived in the middle of the food chain… Clearly the picture painted by many of the so-called experts is very incomplete. The harm done by this spill could be unprecedented and we wouldn’t know about it.
    
    That’s why it’s so irresponsible to go drilling in the deep ocean in the first place. The big corporations like BP don’t give a shit about the ecology and their world view is not informed by science but the only thing that matters to them – the bottom line. And that’s true for almost every other aspect of our economy. Ecological disaster looms while we have hardly begun to understand life, the oceans and the climate of this planet.
    
    If we can’t correct that we humans truly are the cancer of this planet.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MFBF27RUIMMRY3WGW327JHWVOM john
      
      well said.
SomeGuyNamedMark

“Bunch of hippie tree huggers. What? My shrimp supply! Down with BP!”
GawainLavers

Nom, nom, NEUURRGH

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120326002953/simpsons/images/8/87/Blinky_Art.png
Damien

It’s perfectly natural — they’re simply adapting to their local environment.
- Cowicide
  
  That’ll probably be a right wing radio talking point soon enough.
  - M Carlson
    
    No, that’d be too much like evolution, which the Right doesn’t believe in.
    - Cowicide
      
      Agreed, and protecting the environment is certainly similar to contraception in a way as well. Can’t have that, either.
      
      My God, we’re surrounded by baboons!
    - MarcVader
      
      Those deformed critters — another sign that the end is near! So no sense in protecting the environment anyway.
      - Cowicide
        
        Between hating on evolution, the environment, science in general and Gawd’s planned apocalypse making everything but Bible study useless… we just can’t win with these people, I guess..
Guido

“giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.”

Oddly worded.
- http://jonathan-peterson.com/ Jonathan Peterson
  
  “oddly” as in complete nonsense. Mutagenic deformities aren’t going to breed true. And 2-3 generations is absolutely nothing. More important are underweight and sickly dolphins at the top of the food chain as they are eating gulf seafood for every meal. This is a little closer to a full story instead of silliness:
  
  http://theadvocate.com/home/2528424-125/damage-in-oils-wake
  - Guido
    
    Well, yes. I am biologist, but I did not want to seem nitpicking.
RaidenDaigo

And this time it wasn’t the Shredder or Krang’s fault!
- http://profiles.google.com/jon.scott Jonathan Scott
  
  teenage mutant ninja seafood
  - benher
    
    Dude, they’re not mutants, they’re from outer space now…
    Didn’t you get Michael Bay’s memo? He personally leaves one after sodomizing the childhood of each fan.
GawainLavers

Those dispersants must be pretty nasty if they can detect their effect apart from the rest of the toxic sludge stream, I mean Mississippi River, that we pump in there.
- MarcVader
  
  Industrial solvents, drilling fluids, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – the works! In never before seen amounts! I wouldn’t be surprised if this stuff could turn Bambi’s offspring into Alien.
http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

You say without a hard shell, I say pre-shelled.
Guest

Yeah, these are the non-fatal mutations we’re seeing. The tip of the iceberg.
- Cowicide
  
  Right, and what about things going on internally we can’t see? I wonder how healthy it’s been eating this seafood that doesn’t show outward deformities but are affected internally?
  - MarcVader
    
    Well, I just said the other day I could use another arm or two… (Besides it’s probably all God’s will or something.)
    - Cowicide
      
      That would do wonders for multitasking masturbation. Praise Jeebus!
http://profile.yahoo.com/TWVZQRWEUNZBA54YTWVNC6HWUM Paul

Al Jazeera? Really?
- Hunter Hubbell
  
  It has an Arab name! how terrifying! not at all like unbiased news sources such as Fox News, CNN, or the BBC!
- http://insight.pinkonbrown.org/ Dr P Fenderson
  
  Exactly! It’s not like they’re a legitimate and respected global news network that won the 2012 Peabody Award, or News Channel of the Year at the Royal Television Society Awards (beating BBC and Sky News)….oh, wait.
  - Ultan
    
    …or that is accused by their former employees of faking the news out of Syria to give it a pro-western-backed revolution slant.
    ( http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/04/05/exclusive-video-al-jazeera-faked-syria-libya-news-reports-producer-114282/ and linked stories.)
    Edit:Maybe the bombing and other deadly attacks by US forces against Al-Jazeera in Iraq has softened them up. Also, CNN has been accused of worse in the Libya and Syria reporting.
    - http://insight.pinkonbrown.org/ Dr P Fenderson
      
      Did you even read that article? It’s full of misspellings, atrocities against grammar, and uses (as its only 2 sources) a Chinese TV network and an Iranian one. Because *that’s* a reliable news…blog.
      - Ultan
        
        Yeah, I’m not happy with that blog at all. Unfortunately it was the best English-language source I could find.
MichaelDalin

I ate some gulf prawns the other day, and they were delicious. No deformities that I could find. I wonder what’s growing inside me.
http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan

And soon the birth defect rates of Gulf seafood will become a point of partisan contention in the US.
http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

Uh-oh. Looks like Guy N Smith’s “Crabs” books are going to come true.

http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=crabsontherampage&action=display&thread=248
Ashen Victor

Cthulhu called, he said “stop adding tentacles, eyes, and unspeakable organs to things that are horrible enough”.

Later, the elder god added “That´s Shub-niggurath job”.

The fungi from Yuggoth could not be reached for comments.
Luke

I hate you BP.
Rickmccl

Boing boing central, please put Godzilla on standby. We may need his help with giant shrimps.
Ultan

Here is the most complete roundup of BP oil spill stories I have found:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/category/gulf-oil-disaster
The sources are of varying credibility, be careful.
http://twitter.com/superflippy Susanna King

Time to work up some new bumper stickers for the South Carolina shrimpers: Eat Local South Carolina Shrimp: Guaranteed Non-Mutagenic.
Patrick Kidd

Who said the government should clean it up? BP should clean it up!
rebootd

Anyone who conspired/agreed to go ahead with the dispersants should be in prison.
MarcVader

*effect