[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 151 (Tuesday, October 11, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6366-S6368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             GULF OILSPILL

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. As the Senator from Arizona is in the back of 
the Chamber, I just want to say this Senator appreciates his long 
public service and his dedication to this country.
  Mr. President, as one of the Senators from a State that borders the 
Gulf of Mexico, naturally we have been quite concerned in the followup 
to the Deepwater Horizon oilspill. You will remember that was an 
oilspill that at first BP said: Oh, it was only 1,000 barrels a day. It 
was not until Senator Boxer, the chairman of the environment committee, 
and I were able to wrangle the actual streaming video from 5,000 feet 
below the surface and put it up on my Web site that the scientists 
could then calculate how much oil was coming out. It was not anywhere 
close to 1,000 barrels a day. In fact, it ended up being 50,000 barrels 
of oil a day that was gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. As a result of 
that total number of days, almost 5 million barrels of oil has gushed 
into the gulf, we can expect some serious economic and environmental 
consequences and particularly the consequences on the critters.

  It is hard to go down to 5,000 feet and get data, because of the 
pressure there, about what is happening to the critters. But we have an 
opportunity to find out what is happening by where all that oil seeped 
in toward shore, onto the beaches and into the estuaries. Of course, 
the estuaries that were closest to the oil spill were the ones along 
the coastline of Louisiana and a lot of those marshes.
  What I have learned in public service is that when we are addressing 
a problem, if it is a problem of this enormous consequence to not only 
the livelihoods of people who live up and down the gulf, whether their 
livelihoods be tourism, as so much of our State of Florida was 
affected, or whether it be the health of the actual critters themselves 
and, therefore, the livelihoods of a lot of people because of the 
shrimping and the fishing industry, which is major, coming from the 
gulf--what I have learned over my years in public service is what we 
have to do is dig down and start relying on science to inform us as to 
what is at the root of

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the problem and how we go about solving the problem. I can tell my 
colleagues that even though they shut off the oil gushing in, the spill 
is not over yet. So we are going to have to do the kind of informed 
planning as to what we are going to do to address this environmental 
disaster, and science is the key to developing a plan.
  We got a pretty good indication from former Gov. Ray Mabus, who is 
now our Secretary of the Navy and whom the President had tapped to head 
the task force on what is the best way to address the damage. Based on 
Governor Mabus's recommendations, the President then issued an 
Executive order, and it established an ecosystem restoration task force 
comprised of the relevant Federal agencies and each Gulf Coast State.
  In the meantime, what we have done is worked with our colleagues in 
trying to figure out how to fund this important work. For this work, 
for this Senator, science is one of the key components. I can tell my 
colleagues from my experience in doing Everglades restoration in the 
State of Florida, if we don't have the science first to determine what 
to do, then we don't know how to do it; we waste a lot of money and a 
lot of time in the process. The science will help us make sure we 
accomplish what we are planning to do. Then our efforts are going to 
pay off. In other words, when a patient is sick, the doctor is first 
going to determine what is wrong and then will figure out the treatment 
options and then will monitor the patient's progress. Similarly, in 
this case, to get the best outcome for restoring the gulf, we must use 
the same scientific framework.
  Why am I harping on this? Nine gulf coast Senators--minus only one 
gulf coast Senator--and all five State Senators signed up as cosponsors 
of this legislation headed by Mary Landrieu. When we filed this RESTORE 
Act, to take care of the money--in fact, most of the money is from the 
fine the Department of the Interior is going to level under the already 
existing law of the Oil Pollution Act--whatever that fine turns out to 
be, we have filed legislation to direct that money that comes from the 
fine. Naturally, some of it is for environmental restoration. Some of 
it is for economic restoration. Some of it is for planning for the 
future. A lot of it we hope will be going into the determination of 
science. Even though some economic development will come out of this 
legislation that passed unanimously out of the environment committee 
just a few weeks ago--even though economic development is going to be 
part of it--we have to know if we, in fact, are achieving our goal. The 
science is the key to that.
  So just this week I met with two scientist professors at Louisiana 
State University. I will not say what the outcome was of what happened 
in the football stadium that afternoon when the University of Florida 
met with Louisiana State University, but that morning I met with these 
two LSU professors who received a RAPID grant from the National Science 
Foundation. In their research on what are called killifish, Dr. 
Whitehead and Dr. Galvez found that even in areas where the visible oil 
has disappeared, these little fish--about that large--and their embryos 
sustained long-term genetic damage.
  Let me show my colleagues what I am talking about. The killifish is a 
small egg-laying fish found in the Gulf of Mexico. They spawn from 
March to October in shallow water in the marsh grass beds. Killifish, 
which when adult are about that long, are a popular bait fish and they 
eat a lot of mosquito larvae, so they become part of Mother Nature's 
natural pest control. So in April of 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon 
began to gush the oil, it was in the midst of killifish spawning 
season. When the oil continued to flow all summer, inching ever closer 
to the marshes, the killifish were exposed to it. Here is the proof.
  The LSU researchers set minnow traps near the oiled areas off 
Louisiana in an area close to a barrier island between Barataria Bay 
and the Gulf of Mexico. This is what that particular marshy area looked 
like. We can see all the oil on the surface in this photograph. The 
problem is not the oil on the surface. When it gets into the marshes 
and gets into the grasses, this oil will eventually sink all the way 
through the water column and then it gets mixed up in the sediment. 
These small fish that are part of the natural chain of fisheries out in 
the gulf will root around down in that sediment.
  I wish to show my colleagues now the gill tissue of healthy 
killifish. This is the tissue taken from the gills that were not 
exposed to the oiled marsh. The LSU professors had set these traps in 
six different locations, from Louisiana all the way to Alabama, where 
the oil had come in. It went, of course, as far as on into Florida, but 
they set these six locations. They found the area outside this area 
near Barataria Bay was where there was very little exposure. So this is 
a cross-section of some of the gills of killifish. Remember, for a 
fish, its gill is like our lungs. It oxygenates the blood and it 
removes the carbon dioxide. It is like us breathing, except it is a 
fish that is breathing. This gill tissue looks as though it has the 
main trunk and the branches coming off and they are evenly spaced. This 
was outside the area where we found a lot of the oil down in the 
sediment, as in the previous picture of where that marsh was off 
Louisiana. What this healthy tissue does is it provides a lot of 
surface area for oxygen to enter into the fish's bloodstream.
  Let me show my colleagues the slide that shows the gill tissue of a 
killifish from the marsh where all the oil was. The reddish brown we 
see is the staining used by the researchers. There is a protein that 
will react to the uptake of oil and show where there has been exposure. 
That is the reddish brown we see on these branches coming off the 
trunks. We can see just how dark it has stained.
  Look at something else on this exposed tissue of the fish's gill. 
Look how disorganized and warped these branches now look. Compare that 
to the symmetrical shape of what we saw on the healthy fish. This, of 
course, is going to interfere with oxygen and carbon dioxide and the 
ion transfer in the bloodstream of these fish, and it is going to make 
it harder for the fish to breathe.
  So in an area that is as economically and ecologically important as 
the gulf, this information is crucial to determining the extent of the 
harm. The gulf provides almost one-third of the Nation's gross domestic 
product--about one-third of the seafood--one-third of the Nation's 
seafood is coming from areas that are being exposed.
  I asked the professors: Does that mean we can't eat the fish? They 
said there is no evidence it is harmful to eat the fish. But what it is 
showing is that when their ability to breathe starts being incumbered, 
it means these fish are not going to live or they are going to be 
significantly reduced in size or the population is going to be 
significantly reduced. If that is happening to this little fish called 
the killifish, can we imagine what is happening to the whole food 
chain?
  I talked to one of the owners of one of the major New Orleans 
restaurants. I said: Tell me about your fishing. Tell me about your 
shrimpers. He said that some of the shrimpers off Louisiana are having 
to go 200 miles away in order to get their catch of shrimp. Naturally, 
that is having an economic effect because they are having to spend all 
that much extra time and money and fuel to get their catch of shrimp.
  In a region that is so economically and ecologically important as the 
gulf, as a producer of one-third of all this Nation's seafood, you can 
see we potentially have a problem. Historically, we do not know much 
about the gulf. It is, on the average, a mile and a half deep. Where 
the Deepwater Horizon spilled, it is a mile deep. As the oil hit, we 
began to realize we did not have good baseline data about the resources 
that are in jeopardy. So moving forward, science is going to have to be 
a priority. We have to know the extent of the impacts so the American 
people do not pay for BP or Transocean's actions. Why should the 
American taxpayer pay for this? We have to find out how best to restore 
the gulf so it can continue to be the source of the environmental and 
economic wealth it has historically been to this country.
  There are a number of us here who are going to continue to press for 
baseline data collection, long-term monitoring, and innovative research 
to inform gulf coast restoration. I hope our colleagues are going to 
join us in the first step toward that, which is the passage of the 
RESTORE Act, which has

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come out of the Environment Committee, which is bipartisan, supported 
by almost all the Senators from the gulf, and for which we need to 
allocate defined money so it will go to good uses instead of, under 
current law, being poured into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
  We are going to have the opportunity in the coming weeks to pass it 
in the Senate, send it to the House, and see if we can get our 
colleagues there to make a strong and bold step for letting science 
inform us as we try to restore the health of the gulf.
  It is somewhat providential that my colleague from Alabama has come 
to the floor, probably to speak on another subject. But I would point 
out to the Senate he is a cosponsor of the RESTORE Act to try to 
restore the health of the Gulf of Mexico and to understand the changes 
I have just talked about, some of the initial research that has come 
from--sourced by, funded by--the National Science Foundation. I thank 
the Senator from Alabama for his cosponsorship, along with our other 
colleagues from the gulf coast.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The Senator from 
Alabama is recognized.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Florida and 
appreciate his work on this issue. We have had a bipartisan effort. I 
was pleased Chairman Boxer, at the Environment and Public Works 
Committee, of which I am a member, joined with us in moving the 
legislation forward. I think it is time for us to do that now while we 
have an opportunity to make a decision that is fair to all parties. I 
believe this legislation is a thoughtful way to do it that would make 
the gulf a more healthy place. I thank the Senator for his leadership.

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