华盛顿——一项新研究发现，在墨西哥湾一片幽暗的深水区，2010年“深水地平线”爆炸事故后的几年里，海洋动物的数量锐减了约60%。在墨西哥湾介于阳光照射的表层与最黑暗的深海之间的关键水域——英国石油公司运营的油井正是在这里失效，泄漏了1.34亿加仑石油——从泄漏后的那一年到2015年，鱼类数量下降了63.5%。
WASHINGTON — In a deep, dark part of the Gulf of Mexico, the number of marine animals plummeted by about 60% in the years following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, a new study found. In a crucial part of the Gulf between the light surface and the darkest depths, where the BP-operated well failed and dumped 134 million gallons of oil, the number of fish found dropped by 63.5% from the year after the spill to 2015.
根据周一发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上的这项研究，包括虾和磷虾（鲸鱼的重要食物）在内的甲壳类动物减少了62%，而鱿鱼和章鱼等体型较大的动物减少了59.7%。研究发现，这些种群的数量远未恢复。研究人员聚焦于海洋的“暮光带”，即海床上方的一片广阔水域，海豚和鲸鱼等许多表层海洋生物都在此觅食。然而，研究第一作者、诺瓦东南大学生物海洋学家特蕾西·萨顿表示，人们对这个庞大的生态系统知之甚少，而且在2010年泄漏事故发生之前，墨西哥湾的这一区域从未被研究过。
Crustaceans, including shrimp and krill, a key food for whales, went down 62%, and larger animals like squid and octopuses fell 59.7%, according to a study published Monday in the journal PNAS. And those populations haven't come close to recovering, the study found. Researchers focused on the ocean's “twilight zone,” a vast area above the seafloor, where much of the surface marine life, including dolphins and whales, feast on creatures. Yet little is known about this gigantic ecosystem, and this region of the Gulf had not been studied before the 2010 spill, said study lead author Tracey Sutton, a biological oceanographer at Nova Southeastern University.A 2011 post-spill exploration cited in the research, which used six sets of nets at different depths and acoustic sonar, gave scientists a good sense of how much sea life was in the area between the surface and 5,000 feet deep .
研究中引用的一次2011年泄漏后的探测使用了六组不同深度的网具和声学声呐，让科学家们对该区域——从海面到5000英尺深之间——的海洋生物数量有了较好的了解。三年半后，他们带着同样的设备回到同一地点，发现海洋生物的数量只有2011年的三分之一到四分之一。萨顿说：“我们看到了这种大幅下降。那么问题就是为什么？所以我们考察了我们认为可能导致这一现象的所有自然变量，即温度、氧气供应和食物。这些变量都没有随数量下降而变化。真正发生变化的是石油泄漏。”
They returned to the same place with the same equipment three-and-a-half years later and found sea life was between one-third and one-quarter of what it was in 2011.“We saw this big decline,” Sutton said. “The question was then why? So we looked at all of the natural variables we thought could account for it, namely temperature, oxygen supply and food. None of those vary with the decline. The event that did was the oil spill. So we think that’s the most likely cause of the decline.”
我们认为这是导致下降的最可能原因。”研究人员自2015年以来一直在采样，种群数量一直处于低位，2022年和2023年略有回升，但萨顿表示，这种回升在统计学上不显著，也不是持续性的。萨顿团队通过三种不同的证据记录了种群下降情况：渔网捕获的样本、声纳探测结果以及遗传研究，后者显示该物种因近亲繁殖而遗传多样性下降。
Researchers kept on sampling since 2015 and the low populations remained, with a slight rise in 2022 and 2023 that did not prove statistically significant or lasting, Sutton said. Sutton's team documented the population declines with three different lines of evidence: what they caught in the nets, what their acoustic sonar found and genetic studies showing the species losing genetic diversity because of inbreeding.A lot of marine life died instantly after the explosion, which killed 11 workers, and from nearly five months of leaking oil and gas.
爆炸导致大量海洋生物当场死亡，造成11名工人遇难，随后近五个月的石油和天然气泄漏进一步加剧了影响。这些污染物被幸存者的卵体吸收，后续世代的生物因而变得更受损、更虚弱，萨顿说道。BP发言人保罗·塔卡哈希表示，这次事故“永远改变”了公司：“我们已经做出了许多改变，旨在帮助防止类似事件再次发生。”
Those pollutants got stored in the eggs of survivors and subsequent generations of critters got more compromised and weaker, Sutton said.BP spokesperson Paul Takahashi said the accident “forever changed” the company: “We have made many changes intended to help prevent an event like this from ever happening again.”
研究共同作者、南卡罗来纳大学化学海洋学家伊莎贝尔·罗梅罗表示，石油和用于清理泄漏的分散剂都对鱼类造成伤害，但方式不同。石油具有更高的毒性，构成整体威胁；而分散剂会将石油分解成更小的油滴，增加生活在较深水层动物的暴露程度，她解释道。分散剂引发了许多问题，且新研究表明，未来事故中应避免使用这些化学品，而是应添加能促进食油微生物生长的剂前国家科学基金会前任主任丽塔·科尔韦尔说道。
Both the oil and the dispersants used to clean the spill hurt fish, but in different ways, said study co-author Isabel Romero, a chemical oceanographer at the University of South Carolina. Oil is more toxic and an overall threat, but the dispersant breaks the oil into smaller droplets, increasing the exposure of animals that live in the deeper water column, she said. Dispersants caused many problems, and new studies show that in future accidents, it would be better to avoid those chemicals and instead add agents that increase oil-munching microbes, said former National Science Foundation Director Rita Colwell, a University of Maryland environmental microbiologist who headed a 10-year, $500 million BP-funded program to study spill effects.
她是马里兰大学环境微生物学家，曾主持一项为期十年、耗资5亿美元、由BP资助的项目，以研究泄漏的影响。萨顿表示，他的团队无法证明种群下降与BP石油泄漏之间存在确切的因果关系，但通过排除其他可能性并结合时间点，逻辑上可以清楚地看出，泄漏导致了这一问题。磷虾种群下降了72%。
Sutton said his team couldn’t prove an exact causal link to the BP oil spill, but by eliminating the other possibilities and looking at the timing, it’s logically clear that the spill caused the problem. The krill population dropped 72%.
灯笼鱼 — — 其身体遍布蓝绿色发光器官的奇特鱼类 — — 数量如今只有昔日的三分之一，萨顿说。令人惊叹却又令人恐惧的龙鱼 — — 头部附有诱饵，具备锋利牙齿和发光器官 — — 同样遭受了巨大损失，他说。“这些是基础物种，”萨顿说。“它们是大多数生物的食物。因此，整个群落出现全面性变化也不足为奇。”科学家们对墨西哥湾这一未被充分探索的区域有了更多了解。
Lanternfish — odd fish with blue-green lights embedded over their bodies — are a third of what they used to be, Sutton said. The stunning but scary dragonfish — with sharp teeth, light organs and a lure attached to its head — also had big losses, he said.“These are foundational species,” Sutton said. “They're the things most things eat. So it's no wonder that we had wholesale changes across the community.”Scientists learned much about this unexplored area of the Gulf.“One of our biggest findings from the whole thing is how connected the whole oceanic Gulf is from top to bottom because the animals move up and down,” Sutton said.
“我们在这项研究中最大的发现之一是，整个墨西哥湾洋域从上到下高度互联，因为动物会上下移动，”萨顿说。“顶层有捕食者会深潜，许多深海生物会在夜间上浮。因此，这个系统是一个巨大的脉动整体，而不是人们之前可能认为的那种分层结构。”外部科学家尤其担心石油泄漏造成损害的位置。“在某种程度上，我们对太空的了解甚至超过了对内部海洋的认识。因为我们无法直接观察这些区域，人们往往假设一切正常，但此次我们清楚地看到，事情出了非常严重的问题，”斯克里普斯海洋研究所海洋科学家凯特琳·弗雷泽在一封电子邮件中说。
“There are predators at the top that dive deep. Lots of things that are deep that come up at night. So the system is one very large pulsing system, rather than just a layered system like people might have thought beforehand.”Outside scientists were especially bothered by where the spill damaged.“We know more about space in some ways than we do about the inner ocean. Because we can’t see these regions, there is a tendency to assume everything is fine, but here we have a clear result showing that something went very wrong," Scripps Institution of Oceanography marine scientist Kaitlin Frasier said in an email.
弗雷泽并未参与周一发布的这项研究，她在2024年发表了一篇关于墨西哥湾鲸豚类群体的泄漏后研究，发现种群数量下降高达83%。“一次钻井平台的单点故障竟能在数千平方公里范围内造成如此广泛且持久的影响，且在泄漏后13年里几乎没有可见的恢复，这令人震惊，”达尔豪斯大学海洋科学家博里斯·沃姆说，他同样未参与该研究。
Frasier, who wasn't part of the study released Monday, published a post-spill study in 2024 looking at Gulf of Mexico whales and dolphins, finding population drops as high as 83%.“It’s shocking how a single failure in a drilling rig can have this vast and sustained impact over thousands of square kilometers, with little visible recovery over 13 years after the spill,” said Dalhousie University marine scientist Boris Worm, who wasn't part of the study.
“我们必须正视这一点，因为长期以来，这些后果完全不为人见、不为人知。”沃姆和科尔韦尔表示，随着全球就深海采矿和深水增钻进行讨论，这一损害应被牢记在心。
“It is important that we see this, because for the longest time these consequences were completely out of sight and out of mind.”Worm and Colwell said this damage should be kept in mind as the world talks about deep-sea mining and increased oil drilling in deep waters.