Weakened swimmers

Researchers at the University of Miami are studying the effects of crude oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill on the swimming of mahi mahi.

Study finds oil from BP spill impedes fish’s swimming.

IN A LAB in Virginia Key, Miami, a group of baby fish are being put through their paces on a tiny fish treadmill. The 2.5cm-long mahi mahi, being used as part of a study to assess damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that spread crude across the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days in 2010, were exposed when they were embryos to oil collected during the clean-up. Now, at 25 days old, the oil is doing exactly what scientists suspected it would do: hamper the swimming of one of the ocean’s fastest fish.