This is much worse than the 1979 spill, but the Gulf will recover...

From the Chronicle Herald (some Canadian newspaper), just for example. Many things I've read in lots of different newspapers jive with it...


"Longer term, however, there is good reason to believe that nature will recover. In 1979, the largest peacetime spill in history also took place in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Ixtoc 1 blowout — though in just 50 metres of water — in rich fishing grounds off Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula spewed oil for nearly 10 months, dumping an estimated 3.3 million barrels of oil, before relief wells finally plugged the leak.

Amazingly, scientists apparently found that within a few years the fishery had rebounded and very little evidence of the spill remained in the immediate area.

It seems natural oil seepages into the world’s oceans — Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute researchers estimate from one third to one half the oil in the seas comes from natural sources — are largely dealt with by oil-eating microbes, evaporation and the effects of wind, waves and sunlight."