Has the canary in Louisiana’s coastal ecosystem started coughing? That question echoed across the Gulf last week after the release of a study led by LSU revealed that the Gulf killifish, a lowly marsh minnow known locally as a “cocahoe,” showed signs of the hydrocarbon poisoning that was a precursor to the collapse of some fish and wildlife populations in Alaska after the Exxon Valdez spill.
More worrisome, researchers said, those affects were registered even though the toxins — polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — are present in levels so small they are labeled “trace” or “undetectable.”
“I wasn’t surprised we detected responses to an animal that is at high risk to exposure; what surprised me was the responses came at such low levels of the hydrocarbons,” said Andrew Whitehead, lead author of the study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.
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