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Down along the Gulf coast, the beaches look cleaner, the birds less tar-covered, but the longterm consequences of the BP oil spill are leaving their mark under the ocean's surface. Scientists continue to be shocked at what they're pulling up from the area around the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 and coated thousands of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico. It happened almost exactly two years ago, and as much good news as you read about the return of tourism and the spending of BP's money to help the recovery efforts, some major problems remain.
We're most concerned about the eyeless shrimp. Scott Eustis from the Gulf Restoration Network recently showed Al Jazeera English's Dahr Jamail some of those shrimp. It's easy to see what's wrong with them: They have no eyes! In other parts of the Gulf, fisherman are finding fish covered in black lesions and even dead dolphins floating in the water. Eyeless shrimp or killifish covered in oil-colored spots serve as cringeworthy reminders of how even a small amount of leftover contaminant can do huge amounts of damage to local lifeforms.