Nature found a way

Yeah. It's mutant crawfish. Pretty much.

"Attack of the mutant crawfish" sounds like a B-movie film cobbled together to grab Louisiana tax credits. But in Europe, that horror is real.

Marble crawfish, reports the New York Times, are exploding in Europe and marching into Madagascar. The strange crustacean, which likely sprang into existence 25 years ago, lays eggs without mating.

One marbled crawfish can produce a batch of hundreds of eggs. All female. All exact genetic clones of the mother.

The asexual breeding is what has driven the species' growth, crowding out native crawfish.

Just wanted to remind everybody. This movie was actually made already. 

Deformedelicious

Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists

"The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber," Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor told Al Jazeera. "It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known".

The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP's disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.

Not to worry, of course. As soon as Mayor Landrieu's Hospitality Zone plan is up and running, NOTMC and NOCVB can advertise all of these problems away for us.

At least they can until Geauxjira shows up. Then more drastic measures may have to be taken.



Update: And if Geuxjira doesn't get you, maybe one of these blue creatures from the lagoon will.

The persistence of Corexit mixed with crude oil has now weathered to tar, yet is traceable to BP's Deepwater Horizon brew through its chemical fingerprint. The mix creates a fluorescent signature visible under UV light. From the report:

The program uses newly developed UV light equipment to detect tar product and reveal where it is buried in many beach areas and also where it still remains on the surface in the shoreline plunge step area. The tar product samples are then analyzed…to determine which toxins may be present and at what concentrations. By returning to locations several times over the past year and analyzing samples, we've been able to determine that PAH concentrations in most locations are not degrading as hoped for and expected.


Worse, the toxins in this unholy mix of Corexit and crude actually penetrate wet skin faster than dry skin (photos above)—the author describes it as the equivalent of a built-in accelerant—though you'd never know it unless you happened to look under fluorescent light in the 370nm spectrum. The stuff can't be wiped off. It's absorbed into the skin.

Geauxjira!

New 'Giant' Species Of Crayfish Found In Tennessee Creek

My God, this is just what they told us would happen.