Wiped out.

Editor,

The Gulf of Mexico is a feeding ground for birds that migrate between South America and the Arctic Circle. It is a breeding ground for blue fin tuna and other species of fish and mammals that populate the Atlantic Ocean as well as the Gulf itself.

Certainly the environmental disasters described in this article are horrendous, but two aspects of this disaster seem to me to magnify its scale in a unique way: the presence of enormous volumes of oil and other toxins in the water, on the sea floor, and in the marshlands means that biological systems might be wiped out entirely and thus may never recover; and the influence of this catastrophe on far-flung regions amplifies the geographic scale across our entire hemisphere, plus if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream, it could have even further reaching effects.

Killing migratory birds that stop off to feed in the Gulf of Mexico can upset the balance between birds, insects, vegetation, and aquatic life in unpredictable ways hundreds or even thousands of miles away. And wiping out sea turtles' young, for example, could wipe the species out altogether, if not this year then in a future year as millions of gallons toxic chemicals remain in the environment.

Re: "Where Gulf Spill Might Place on the Roll of Disasters" (6/19/2010)