ABSTRACT

Twenty-three scientists from 13 Gulf Coast educational and non-profit institutions have recently completed a two-year ecological study of Timbalier Bay, Louisiana and the adjacent inner continental shelf. This multidiscipline study, coordinated through the Gulf Universities Research Consortium was aimed at determining the measurable impact upon the environment of three decades of intensive oil exploration, drilling and production.

Synoptically coordinated biological, chemical, physical and geological observations were made at Bay and offshore locations, selected specifically to reveal the impact of oil operations on the environment. Observations were made seasonally over the two year span and compared with each other as well as with more remote control stations.

Basic conclusions can now be drawn from partial analysis of the 1.5 million data points acquired during the study. Comparisons with more limited baseline studies generated in 1952 reveal no significant ecological changes in Timbalier Bay that can be related to oil activities. Timbalier Bay and adjacent shelf are more highly productive biologically than other regions so far studied in the eastern and open Gulf of Mexico. There has been no reduction in commercial fish, shrimp and oyster production during the decades of continuously increasing petroleum activities. Concentrations of hydrocarbons, trace elements or other compounds or by-products of petroleum operations in organisms, the water column and bottom sediments are sufficiently low as to present no known, persistent, biological hazards.

Natural phenomena such as seasonal changes in water temperature, circulation patterns, salinity variations, upwellings and river floods and resulting turbidity increases have much greater impact upon the environment than do petroleum drilling and production operations.

The impact of drilling and production platforms in the area investigated is not biologically detrimental; if anything they increase biological productivity and total biomass through the reef effect of the platform structures.

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