The international scientific community as well as independent scientists linked to the U.S. government are alarmed by the disaster occurred on the platform Deepwater Horizon, owned by BP in the Gulf of Mexico and the concern makes sense.

Although BP and its executives have to try some time, minimize the seriousness of the effects of this disaster, saying that there is no evidence, or even large amounts of oil polluting the underwater world, “in fact the problem may be even more devastating effects than you can imagine”.

Some researchers have claimed to have found large underwater black marks for hundreds of meters deep, even seem to be oil, and that stretch for miles.

The executive Tony Hayward said that oil naturally seeks the surface “but researchers say that if the disaster hit the depths, will inevitably destabilize the entire ecosystem and food chain.

“The reality is that all fish and invertebrates that come into direct contact with oil will die.” “I have no doubt about that, said ” Prosanta Chakrabarti, a biologist fromt Louisiana State University, and the proof of these assertions are more real images from cameras posted in the casting pit, which shows clearly dying birds covered in oil.

But worst of all is that no cameras to record what actually happens in the rest of the gulf. The failure is due to the size of the area that has more than 1.5 million kilometres of square and depths that can reach 4000 meters.

In a natural process of the struggle for survival, the inhabitants of the deep seek the surface in search of food and end up becoming food for other species. Those who inhabit the higher parts, like the shrimp for example, and that are during the breeding season, have their eggs exposed to oil and die and those surviving fatally starve if the chain of plankton is affected. The larger species are more resistant but not immune to disaster.

Just as a comparison, the explosion of the Mexican platform Ixtoc I, released at the time, somewhere around 53 million liters but the accident was not only more serious because it occurred in the highest and the oil was largely on the surface.

The state of alert was raised when a team from the University of South Florida found an oil slick moving down the surface towards the coast of Alabama, a place full of fish and other marine life.

So far no fish mortality was detected but the scientific community knows that the impacts of an accident of this magnitude can be felt for years.

The exact notion of the disaster that is on the horizon was the recent discovery of marine turtles covered in oil and several dead dolphins in the area of the spill, which is a clear sign of what might pose to the food chain, this disaster over the years.

The leak comes primarily from three submarine pipelines located at 1.525 meters in depth and the well is capable of generating 5.000 daily oil barrels, equivalent to 800,000 liters daily from April 21, the day of the accident. The slick reached an area of 72 per 170 kms.

Because of the large oil slick which has reached its coast, the state of Louisiana declared a state of emergency, and so did other states in the region as the Florida and places as the counties of Santa Rosa, Walton, Bay and Gulf are in a state of alert.

The region bounded by the Gulf of Mexico, especially Louisiana, is home to around 40% of mangrove swamps and Americans and is the natural habitat of countless species of fish and birds. Some of these like the turtle and brown pelican are species directly affected by the accident.

Besides the threat to marine life and other animals of the region, the leak also brings economic losses in the area, considering that the fishing season in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, began on April 19 and the fishermen will have fatally undermined by their production pollution.