Disasters (natural or human-caused) are like TV shows. As soon as you get into one, your friend tells you about another one that you just have to check out, and then by the time you’re caught up with that one, you start seeing headlines all over the place for a new one, and so on forever until one day you see an article about that one you haven’t thought about in a year, and you’re like, “Huh. Is that still happening?”
Monday is the five-year anniversary of the start of the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst oil spill in U.S. history, lasting for 87 days and spewing more than 200 million gallons of oil into the surrounding environment.
Here to remind us that, yes, the disaster is still a thing and probably will be for a while is renowned doodler and science communicator Perrin Ireland. In this video, she (literally) paints a pretty bleak picture. Basically, scientists are still trying to account for all the leaked oil and expect it to be years before they fully understand the spill’s impact on the local ecosystem.
Check out the video, and be sure to stay tuned for next season, when scientists continue the hunt for those pesky dispersants!
Oh, and by the way, have you heard about all those exploding oil trains?
