The massive Gulf oil spill is raising seafood safety questions, as university scientists report finding oil droplets in crab larvae.
The larvae of blue crabs and fiddler crabs from Louisiana to Pensacola, Fla., contain oil droplets, reports scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi and Tulane University in New Orleans, according to the Biloxi Sun Herald.
"We will see this enter the food chain in a lot of ways," Harriet Perry, director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, said in the story. "Fish are going to feed on (crab larvae). We have also just started seeing it on the fins of small, larval fish — their fins were encased in oil. That limits their mobility, so that makes them easy prey for other species."
Perry told the McClatchy paper that researchers have not yet linked the crab larvae's hydrocarbons to the BP disaster, but she has little doubt the Gulf spill is the source. In her 42 years of studying blue crab, she said she's never seen such contamination.
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