NYT - Most turtle deaths due to shrimping, not the oil spill

The rush to assemble death toll figures for marine life supposedly killed by the current terrible oil spill of the coast of the United States has always made me uneasy. Animals die from a variety of causes every day. That's nature. It was always dangerous to just assume that every dead animal within the area affected must have been killed due to exposure to oil. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist says he believes most of the dead turtles that have been examined since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill died not from the oil or the chemical dispersants put into the water after the disaster, but from being caught in shrimping nets, though further testing may show otherwise. Full article here.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous