Identifying the casualties of BP’s Gulf Oil Spill

Lauren Schenkman’s article in this week’s Science illustrates some of the complexity involved in attributing marine vertebrate carcasses to death by oil exposure. Apparently, more than 200 sea turtles and 20 dolphins have been recovered by NOAA, but few show overt signs of death by oil. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t die from oil exposure, only that determining so for sure is no easy task.