This Is Not A Road
This may look like a rural gravel road, but it's not. It's the surface of a Louisiana waterwaycovered with hundreds of thousands of dead fish, crabs, eels and stingrays — even a dead whale.Fish kills are common along the Gulf of Mexico, where "Dead Zones" now pop up every year. But these fish kills, especially around the mouth of the Mississippi river, have usually been limited to a single species of fish — not a broad die-off of dozens of species like redfish, flounder, trout and, if a local Louisiana news station is correct, a whale.
That's raising alarms with local Louisiana governmental officials like Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who distributed the photo up top to local media. He thinks the die-off may be related to the BP oil disaster this summer.
Many scientists fear we'll see more dead zones like these as an influx of oil-eating microbes would lead to more Gulf Coast dead zones, as the microbes produced by chemical dispersants use heavy amounts of oxygen when consuming oil particles.
There's no proof that the BP oil spill is to blame for this particular fish kill, but frankly, no matter what the cause, it's still a horrific sight to see.
Send an email to Ray Wert, the author of this post, at ray@jalopnik.com.
