Gulf Oil Disaster: The Threat To Food Chain Real -US Official

Gulf spill 'bigger and uglier than we had hoped' by David A. Fahrenthold

Some experts say troubled ecosystems are now being pushed to the brink...

"The distribution of the oil, it's bigger and uglier than we had hoped," said Roger Helm, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official and the lead scientist studying the spill for the Interior Department. "The possibility of having significant changes in the food chain, over some period of time, is very real. The possibility of marshes disappearing . . . is very real."

Helm said that his prognosis for the spill had worsened in the past week — as the amount of oily shoreline increased from Louisiana to Florida, despite cleanup efforts. "This just outstrips everybody's capability" to clean it up, he said.

...Is the oil killing off Louisiana's coastal marshes? State officials have said in interviews that they've seen it coating the grasses and mangroves that hold the region's land in place.

..."The marsh grasses, the canes, the mangrove are dying. They're stressed and dying now," said Robert Barham, secretary of the state's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. "There's very visible evidence that the ecosystem is changed."

See more on the endless oil eruption in the Gulf of Mexico.