Identification

Title

Slow recovery of Barataria Bay dolphin health following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (2013-2014), with evidence of persistent lung disease and impaired stress response

Abstract

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) disaster resulted in large-scale oil contamination of the northern Gulf of Mexico. As part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment designed to investigate the potential impacts of the DWH oil spill, comprehensive health assessments were conducted on bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus living in oiled bays (Barataria Bay [BB], Louisiana, and Mississippi Sound [MS], Mississippi/Alabama) and a reference bay with no evidence of DWH oil contamination (Sarasota Bay [SB], Florida). As previously reported, multiple health issues were detected in BB dolphins during 2011. In the present study, follow-on capture-release health assessments of BB dolphins were performed (2013, 2014) and indicated an overall improvement in population health, but demonstrated that pulmonary abnormalities and impaired stress response persisted for at least 4 yr after the DWH disaster. Specifically, moderate to severe lung disease remained elevated, and BB dolphins continued to release low levels of cortisol in the face of capture stress. The proportion of guarded or worse prognoses in BB improved over time, but 4 yr post-spill, they were still above the proportion seen in SB. Health assessments performed in MS in 2013 showed similar findings to BB, characterized by an elevated prevalence of low serum cortisol and moderate to severe lung disease. Prognosis scores for dolphins examined in MS in 2013 were similar to BB in 2013. Data from these follow-on studies confirmed that dolphins living in areas affected by the DWH spill were more likely to be ill; however, some improvement in population health has occurred over time.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d74m96bz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-01-31T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact