Most Marine Life in Persian Gulf Thrives Despite Huge Oil Slick
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
Published: May 26, 1992
ABOARD THE MOUNT MITCHELL, in the Persian Gulf— IN the troubled waters of the Persian Gulf, a multifarious alliance is resisting the onslaught of a monolithic enemy that invaded 16 months ago.
The invader was the oil slick discharged during the gulf war last year -- at six million barrels or more, by far the most oil ever spilled into a nearly closed body of water. The resistance: countless marine species struggling for survival.
For the forces of life, the news from the front has been surprisingly good. At least that is the conclusion of many scientists taking part in a 100-day expedition by the Mount Mitchell, a research vessel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that has been operating in the gulf since February.
Even as hundreds of miles of Saudi Arabian beaches and coastal shallows suffocate under thick mats of congealing tar that laid waste to fertile flats between the high and low tidal lines, in deeper waters the damage from the spill is hard to detect.
"Life in the intertidal zone, where the heaviest oil came, has been eliminated in many cases," said Dr. Robert Clark of the oceanographic agency, the expedition leader aboard the 231-foot ship. "But subtidally, it looks as one would expect to see in a healthy community."
A reporter steaming through the gulf for nine days with 24 scientists on the Mount Mitchell helped collect hundreds of evidently healthy specimens from coral reefs, fishing grounds, pearl beds and shallows, just off the shores of tiny Saudi islands that carry the scars of the spill. Although in some areas globules of oil bobbed in the currents, perhaps fresh from oil rigs on the horizon, among the deeper reefs there was no visible sign of oil.
Asked what surprised him the most after diving about a dozen times in a week, Dr. Mark Eakin, a biological oceanographer from N.O.A.A., described the branching antlers of staghorn coral he had seen: "Nice, healthy Acropora growing in 2 feet of water, 10 or 15 yards from the water's edge, where there was tar in the sand, tarballs on the beach, tar floating in the water -- healthy, happy coral. Or I should say, apparently healthy and happy."
But at the very end of the nine-day leg of the trip focusing on coral reefs and fisheries, the scientists found disturbing evidence of what may have been war damage on a reef just off the Kuwaiti port of Shuaiba, near oil fields that were set afire in the war and just south of where most of the spilled oil entered the gulf in January 1991.
Here there were clear signs of coral mortality: the staghorn coral was bleached, and the domes of brain coral were shedding their living tissues as the swift current scoured them with briny sediment. Scientists said the death almost certainly occurred within the last year and a half.
But there was no visible residue of oil in the water, and scientists could not be sure whether the death was a result of spilled oil, or of dark skies and cool water associated with the Kuwaiti oil fires last year, or of fallout from the smoke, untreated discharges of sewage or some other factor. Change Termed Permanent
This kind of damage makes Dr. Sylvia Earle, until recently N.O.A.A.'s chief scientist, more cautious than some who marvel at the gulf's resilience. "It is a permanent change," she said of the damage. "It will recover, but it will be different."
The biggest problem in interpreting what biologists are discovering is that little was known about the condition of the gulf before the war. "We don't know what is missing," Dr. Earle said.
What is surviving, however, was enjoying a binge of procreation. Sea turtles, among the gulf's endangered species, circled the sandy islands where before long they will bury their eggs. The corals were primed to spawn, disclosing their swollen gonads to the naked eye. The bellies of female emperor fish bulged with roe. From a trawling net spilled handfuls of grapelike transparencies -- fertilized eggs, each containing an embryonic cuttlefish.
The cruise will provide data for marine scientists to analyze for years. Information from underwater photographs, specimens of algae, and heaps of sediment grabbed from the seabed, is recorded in a data base that N.O.A.A. and the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment have pledged to make available to all.
The Mount Mitchell has deployed current-measuring devices across the length and breadth of the gulf, and day after day it takes measures of salinity, temperature and depth, information that will allow oceanographers to understand the gulf better than before. By the time the cruise ends in June, about 150 researchers from 18 nations will have investigated a world whose veil until now had scarcely been lifted.
By the end of a week, the divers had collected animals representing at least 14 phyla, or broad divisions of animal types, and the number was still rising. "There's not a rain forest in the world where you can find 14 phyla," Dr. Earle said.
The expedition lingered for several days around three of the most productive reef islands in the Persian Gulf: Karan, Jana and al Arabiya.