Introduction The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill took place in 2010 and is known to be the largest marine oil spill in history (Pallardy, 2018). The spill was caused by an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010. The Transocean and BP company owned Oil rig was located 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana (Pallardy, 2010). It is thought to of leaked 60,000 barrels per day to make a total of 4,900,000 barrels altogether. Of that 4,900,000 barrels, only 800,000 could be taken out of the water. The oil spill overall polluted 1,100 miles of shoreline (Pallardy, 2010). Current Environmental Impacts There are various amounts of negative environmental impacts from that the oil spill has caused. To this day, 8 years later oil is still appearing near the islands in the Gulf of Mexico. Organisms such as dolphins, jellyfish, different species of fish, and any animals that lived in the area developed harsh health defects (Schleifstien, 2016). Focusing solely on dolphins, after the spill in 2010, they have shown an increase of 80% in reproductive …show more content…
After the catastrophe, oil and gas companies have not taken over any more safety regulations, they have only expanded their drilling, making the risk for this happening again to be greater than it ever has been in the past. (Clearfield, 2015). In other words, no policies that have been planted are restricting companies from making more potential problems. The spill took place in 2010 and in 2012 there was another deadly explosion on a different oil platform in the Gulf, along with a drilling site near the Alaskan coast to do the same a couple weeks later (Clearfield, 2015). There was also another rig that collapsed in 2013 on the Louisiana coast. (Clearfield, 2015). These added incidents prove not enough is being done to prevent the oil spills from happening over and