Scientists are still working to understand the ecological consequences of last year's BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Research on the killifish, a minnow-like fish that is believed to be a good indicator of wetlands health, shows biological abnormalities -- impaired gills, cellular deformation, embryonic damage -- up to two months after oil had disappeared in the Gulf, the Washington Post reported Monday.
It's similar to the same "initial signs of toxicity" that were present in Alaska herring and harlequin ducks after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill catastrophe in Resurrection Bay, according to the Post.
Those populations and others crashed after Exxon Valdez and some have yet to recover, the Post notes. However, herring population crashes have never been definitively linked to the oil spill, either.
The herring population did shrink so seriously that commercial fisheries have been few and far between since 1989. But one researcher proposed that the shrinking Resurrection Bay herring population was because of whales, not oil.
Whale researcher Jan Straley and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist found that whales "were exerting predation pressure on Prince William Sound herring, which is potentially impeding the recovery."
A Louisiana State University scientist studying the Gulf told the Post that the findings were "cause for concern" based on what happened in Alaska.
Read the Washington Post article here and the Dispatch's September 2010 article on the post-Exxon Valdez herring population here.