Numbers on the board: The Gulf Coast, four years after the BP disaster

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http://grist.org/climate-energy/numbers-on-the-board-the-gulf-coast-four-years-after-the-bp-disaster/

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Last week, I wrote about three victories that have emerged since the BP disaster, but the flip side of that is a host of problems that continue to plague the Gulf, which has suffered a whole string of insults, from Hurricane Katrina to ongoing erosion of its coastlines due to to erosion and fossil fuel extraction. Below is an index of statistics on the Gulf’s health, cobbled together from recent news articles, reports, and datasets documenting damage done to the coast:

30 percent: Portion of the nation’s shrimp supply that comes from the Mississippi River Delta area

900: Bottlenose dolphins found dead or stranded in the oil spill area since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded

500: Sea Turtles found dead or stranded near the oil spill area between 2011 and 2013

20 percent: Portion of the Gulf’s bluefin tuna exposed to oil while in their larval stage

82 percent: Population decline in bluefin tuna since the 1970s due to overfishing

778 miles: Amount of coastline BP says it cleaned before ending “active cleanup”

$14 billion: Amount BP says it spent on spill response and cleanup activities

***MORE AT THE LINK