Deepwater Horizon before it sank.

HATTIESBURG, Mississippi – The scientists over at the University of Southern Mississippi, in conjunction with the Tulane University, have found what appears to be oil in the postlarva of blue crabs, which are making their way into the coastal marshes along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, which may indicate that oil may just be finding its way into estuarine food chains.

The director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at the Gulf Cost Research Laboratory (GCRL), Harriet Perry, has discovered traces of hydrocarbons (or we can call it oil), in fiddler crab, and blue crab larva. Perry has indicated that the oil found seems to be stuck in between their hard outer shells, and their inner skins.

Perry had this to say when questioned further, “I’ve been sampling in Mississippi coastal waters for 42 years and I have never seen this, my guess is that the crab picked up this oil offshore while in the megalopal (postlarval) stage and brought the oil with it when it came back to the marsh.”

Dr. Caz Taylor, a researcher at Tulane University, has recently discovered orange-colored droplets in megalopae as far eat as Pensacola Florida, and as far west as Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana, but he has not yet completed the analysis to determine the composition of these droplets.

There have been samples sent to an independent research lab in Florida, which has confirmed that there are hydrocarbons present. While no direct link has been made between the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, there is enough circumstantial evidence to warrant further probing.