Most people only consider shrimp as entities to be consumed, components of a cocktail. So, there is often no audience with whom to have a discussion about the ethics of these particularly delightful creatures. Given recent reports coming out of the Gulf Coast, though, I think this may change:
Source 1:
SCOTT EUSTIS: We have some evidence of deformed shrimp, which is another developmental impact, so that shrimp’s grandmother was exposed to oil while the mother was developing, but it’s the grandchild of the shrimp that was exposed grows up with no eyes.
Source 2:
The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP’s disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.
Shrimp in the Gulf Coast no longer have eyes. And it isn't just shrimp that were alive at the time of the BP Oil Spill. Three generations later, shrimp in the gulf coast have evolved to not have eyes. This isn't a case of oil being spilled, some seagulls died, and we cleaned it up and moved on. This isn't an accident that created a mess within history from which we can move on.
The BP Oil Spill genetically modified marine life in the Gulf Coast to such a degree that the fucking shrimp no longer have fucking eyes.
Discussing this in terms of how many dollars we ought to fine them is more than laughable. It doesn't even seem rationally possible to quantify this, or even articulate it, in ethical terms. This isn't a finite mess, a limited scope of problems, or even a minor one-time inconvenience.
BP's oil spill caused a species of animal to lose its fucking eyes.
I don't know how to rationally react to this, or how to even frame the beginnings of an argument against it. Do we try to discuss this in terms of economics, ethics, morality? Are any of those conceptual frameworks even capable of fully grasping this atrocity? I'd be curious to know what other people think. Other than just ignoring this, how do you begin to mentally deal with the fact that human activity rendered a species to be eyeless; we cause Gulf Coast shrimp to evolve-away their eyes. How can we even begin to conceptualize the magnitude of this?
Previously, I thought that splitting the atom or traveling to the moon were fairly significant human impacts. But now that we're evolving eyes out of species...
Where do we start that conversation?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iSFfolBlNo
Posts
Would you still eat them?
They've been exposed to such a quantity of chemicals that their fundamental genetic composition has been modified.
Before this particular bit gets blown out of proportion: Unless you consider epigenetic modifications to be "genetic modifications", no, BP did not genetically modify these shrimp. This is a fairly common phenomena with arthropods- the grandparents are exposed to a stimulant, and it causes changes "on top of" their genome. Essentially, it changes the pattern of genetic regulation present in the organism, mostly through changes in DNA methylation patterns that build up thanks to the strange sex determination in arthropods (that is, it is not just 'have XY chromosomes, then be male'). Things like temperature, pH, and predation (among other things) can all influence the sex of baby shrimp.
To bring this back though, hands up if you expected long-term fallout from this.
*raises own hand*
This is not really surprising, and biochemically and physiologically isn't surprising, and the BP oil spill was wayyyy worse than people are giving it credit for, but this is not "genetic modification" unless you take an extremely loose definition of the term.
Can we get our alternate energies yet?
It just shows how important it is to have strict regulation and environmental awareness I guess.
Though if they're safe to eat then hopefully it won't tank the Gulf Coast economy.
Unlike most things, I'm actually interested in the science of this.
If Shrimp have "epigenetically"..."modified" or "evolved" or "whatever term is appropriate" in such a way that their offspring no longer have eyes...is that a lasting modification? Or does the genome "reset" at some point?
Also, why would "epigenetic" and "genetic" be different? Is there a simple explanation for why "epigenetic" and "genetic" are significantly different sorts of modifications, in terms of eye-loss?
It seems like if the chemicals were strong enough to make eyes go away, there would be other modifications as well passed through the shrimp generations.
I think one of the articles talks about how the FDA is continually testing them.
Indeed, I'm interested in the fallout (heh) of the changes, but so long as they're safe for human consumption I won't be too bothered.
That sounds worse than it should, as a Gulf Coast resident I'm pretty much constantly pissed at BP anyway, but eyeless shrimp aren't the first horrific thing we've done to another species.
Lacking eyes is actually incredibly advantageous within certain environments. If your surroundings do not allow enough light in, for example, eyes are nothing but a vulnerability. Or, if your environment is simply too toxic, too caustic or otherwise too hazardous to allow for soft & complex organelles like eyes.
I imagine the Shrimp will more or less do fine, eyes or no eyes. In theory they should also be fine to eat, so long as they're not directly contaminated and assuming the loss of eyes didn't come 'packaged' with some incidental change that also makes them inedible.
Basically my thoughts exactly.
In fact, I don't think what you're suggesting--that a mutagenic chemical could trigger the same mutation across an entire population of organisms--is very likely. Mutations by their nature are mostly random; getting consistent results usually requires carefully tailored enzymes, viruses, or the like.
It can eventually "go back", at least from the other examples I have seen (butterflies, for example, and Drosophila)**.
The difference here is that the genetic code itself is not being changed, just what parts are...I guess "read" by the molecular machinery that translates DNA into proteins.
Scott Eustis said it correctly, these are a developmental phenomena we are most likely looking at, and the thinkprogress article mentions "a few scientists" and then makes the claim that these are "mutagenic"....which may not really be true.
I am not certain these are changes to the underlying genome (which is what a mutagen does in some way), if it is the F2 generation showing these signs. It is just too similar to other delayed-onset developmental responses we see in other arthropods to imply that it is mutagenic without hard evidence.
If it were mutagenic in the traditional sense, then yeah, it could be changing the underlying code, or again it could just be getting in the way. There are a lot of....faster? ways to get the deformity we see here than a change in the actual code.
Which is why I think this is more of some chemical interfering with a regulatory protein or causing some sort of DNA methylation event, not an actual mutagenesis....that and we see this in other arthropods, but usually with things like diapause. I can't find my source, but I read a paper that showed that Drosophila grandchildren whose grandparents were exposed to certain stimuli, would enter diapause after a set time, without that stimuli.
My point is, this isn't genetic modification like most people generally think.
But that doesn't mean it isn't harmful and horrible.
Everything is going to kill us :[
And you are right, this is a goddam tragedy...but maybe losing one of America's prized foodstocks will cause more people to finally wake up and take environmentalism serious-pfffffthahahahaha I couldn't even finish that.
It is a good thing I am not an actual ecologist, or I would have given up years ago.
I was thinking more along the lines of a whole team of mutant shrimp that uses their powers to fight evil and to redefine human opinion on what it means to be a mutant shrimp. Only instead of having adamantium claws or psionic powers they're just sort of blind. And sit there helplessly.
And not long afterwards the news was like, "Huh. Well. Looks like the ocean was way more capable of dealing with this than we thought. Carry on."
So far I say we're still a lot closer to the latter than the former. I hope you didn't drive to work in a fossil-fueled vehicle this morning.
Is there a way to test the shrimp to know which kind of mutation it is? Or is this the sort of thing where we just have to wait for more generations of shrimp to be produced? If they get their eyes back eventually, then it was epigenetic, but if they never get their eyes back it was genetic?
The ocean wasn't capable of dealing with it. The oil dispersants caused all the oil to sink to the bottom of the ocean, newspersons couldn't see it any longer, and so they went "herp derp problem solved."
I walked.
Well, the ocean can actually deal with oil spills given enough time. Oil (while highly toxic to things that are exposed to it) is something that the ocean can break down, eliminate, and the ecosystem will recover.
The problem is the dispersant. The gulf is a MASSIVE roll of the dice on whether or not the dispersants they used are highly toxic in the long term. If it's not, then the ecosystem will recover in a decade or so (providing we don't keep kicking it over, which we do). If it IS then we will be seeing problems for a long long time.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yeah, that's what I meant in my post; chemical dispersants fuck shit up. Apologies if I was unclear.
No, the story was that deep sea drilling could destabilize the methane hyrdrates that lie under the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico. The hyrdrates are composed of methane gas trapped and stabilized within "ice cages", and usually their depth under the seabed helps protect them from destabilization - even if the waters of the Gulf warm (though warmer water temps will eventually impact hydrates, even hundreds of meters below the seabed). However, those hundreds of meters of insulation don't help as much when you're shoving a giant oil drill hundreds of meters down into the seabed.
It's more an argument over deep sea drilling in general, rather than the BP spill specifically. The part that was relevant to the BP spill was that the BP spill showed that when something goes wrong that far down, human technology is not yet able to respond quickly and/or effectively.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. If the methane from the Gulf were released into the atmosphere, subsequent warming could melt the polar caps, whose permafrost contains huge amounts of methane trapped in the ice.
However, those methane hyrdrates remain a prime potential energy source, and energy companies around the world remain committed to plans on how to extract them from the ocean floor. Their revenue potential is massive.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22756/
This. Out of sight, out of mind. The dispersant, which is banned in the UK for toxicity, isn't even designed to be used underwater.
It actually would've been better to let the oil reach the surface. That would've made the oil much easier to track, contain, and clean. But it would've also resulted in pictures of oily pelicans, and that's bad PR.
The whole thing was a giant snafu. They didn't even know how to properly deploy the containment booms. Easily the worst disaster response since Katrina.
We actually can test for different methylation patterns (which is one of the most common epigenetic mechanisms). However unless we know where to look, ie which genes are responsible for eye growth, it would be a pretty big shot in the dark. Also there are several other epigenetic mechanisms that would be much more difficult to test for. If the stimulus causing the lack of eyes is still present, and who knows how much oil it would take to actually cause that change, then the shrimp will not revert. Epigenetic changes can take several generations to show up so it would be another few years before we saw them revert back.
PSN:Furlion
Pretty much this.
People have been trying to take down BP since it was the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, due to underhanded business practices (treating Iranians as slaves, having a Pre-MP Winston Churchill secure rights for the Burmah Oil Company to exploit Iran's reserves, etc...) and simply not giving-a-fuck.
Closest anyone has come to making BP answer for it's practices was when Mohammad Mosaddegh was prime minister of Iran and sought to nationalize Iran's oil industry. BP used it's stroke to help sell Eisenhower on the idea of staging a coup against Moasaddegh's government, which he promptly did in 1953.
At this point BP is pretty much the cockroach of the industrial world. A nuclear war could eradicate all corporations as we know them, and BP will still be there waving it's dick at everybody.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Next, Joe will send a letter to the shrimp king, demanding that his subjects regain their eyes in order to not make BP look bad.
You figure out the rest.
*i.e. almost half.
Oh that old canard, because Britain is uncomfortable accepting its responsibility.
BP is "too big to fail", mostly in England, but also in Europe and America and large sections of the mideast. Too many pensions and investment plans are locked up in the corporation for anyone to accept that they are (in every way that counts) committing acts of war against humanity.
And here in Texas I still, on occasion, hear an advertisement on the radio where some good ol' southern boy or girl talks about how BP put them back to work and the gulf is so beautiful and blahblahblah BP is a magnanimous and merciful lord so clap and cheer you filthy fucking peasant. I SAID CHEER!
Sad part? As someone who works for legal tech I will probably be (very indirectly) helping them, because we tend to work for the bad guys. And quitting that job will literally put me and mine out on the street.