The satellite maps of the spill were layered over the known spawning area of bluefin tuna and all the data was crunched in the context of a habitat index, based on the assumption that the spill hit at the most critical time, when the juvenile fish were most susceptible to impacts, feeding near the surface on larvae that were suffused in oil. It actually sounds like it was a fairly good first stab at calculating the damage to this valuable fishery, but what do I know, I'm not a marine fisheries biologist either, just a reporter. In followup interviews since posting this story — http://summitcountyvoice.com/2010/10/19/bluefin-tuna-population-takes-bi... — the consensus is that the 20 percent figure is probably too low. The impacts may have been much greater on a population already under the gun from over-fishing.

This story isn't about who drives what, or what your clothes are made of — that's the typical deflection used by people who don't want to accept the reality that our addiction to oil is killing us. It's about science, and the first attempt to get a handle on the oil spill impacts to a critical and endangered fishery.

Why did we have to hear this from the European Space Agency? Because the federal agencies involved in the response are taking a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil attitude and trying to continually downplay the impacts. They've been doing it from day one.

This blurb has so little information in it to back up the headline that it should be removed! The Ocean Foundation states on thier web site: "Our niche is providing high-end philanthropic advice for a community of donors who care about the coast and oceans." They don't sound like an organization that does science!

Anyone that knows the species knows that there is no way to know how the numbers might be effected by anything until that years spewn can be calculated, and it's much too soon for that!

Sounds like pure speculation to me, Terry!