News Life

The farther the better for corals after oil spill

Deepwater organisms may be slow to recover from Gulf accident

By Alexandra Witze

- More than 2 years ago

Deepwater corals didn’t escape the ecological damage of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. How much they were hurt depended on how close to the spill’s source they were.

More than 20 kilometers away from the wellhead that ruptured in the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Paramuricea coral thrive (left).