A decades-long recovery
On a more somber note, Dr Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer and a marine biologist, believes it will likely take the Gulf decades to recover from the BP disaster.
"The impacts of the Ixtoc-1 blowout in the Bay of Campeche in 1979 are still being felt," said Cake, referring to a large oil spill near the Mexican coast, "and there are bays there where the oysters have still not returned. My prediction is we will be dealing with the impacts of this spill for several decades to come and it will outlive me."
According to Cake, blue crab and shrimp catches have fallen in Mississippi and Alabama since the spill, and he also expressed worries about ongoing dolphin die-offs. But his primary concern is the slow recovery of the region's oyster population.
"Mississippi recently opened their season, and their oyster fisherman are restricted to 12 sacks of oysters a day. But they can't even reach six," Cake said. "Thirty sacks would be a normal day for oysters -- that was the previous limit - but that is restricted now because the stocks just aren't there."
Cake's conclusion is grim. "Here in the estuarine areas, where we have the oysters, I think it'll be a decade or two before we see any recovery."
BP previously provided Al Jazeera with a statement on this topic, a portion of which read: "Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident."
BP claims that fish lesions are naturally common, and that before the spill there was documented evidence of lesions in the Gulf of Mexico caused by parasites and other agents.
More oil found
The second phase of the ongoing federal trial against BP investigates whether the company's actions to halt the flow of oil during the blowout were adequate, and aims to determine how much oil was released.
"BP is mounting an aggressive legal and public relations campaign to shield itself from liability and minimize the amount of oil spilled in the Gulf, as well as the ongoing impacts from the disaster," said Jonathan Henderson, an organizer for the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group.
Even Louisiana's Republican Governor Bobby Jindal agrees. Jindal recently said, "Three and a half years later, BP is spending more money -- I want you to hear this -- they are spending more money on television commercials than they have on actually restoring the natural resources they impacted."
As far away from the blowout site as Florida, researchers continue to find oil in both Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay.
In Louisiana, according to the LA Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), more than 200 miles of shoreline have "some degree of oiling," including 14 miles that are moderately or heavily oiled. From March through August of this year, over three million pounds of oiled material has been collected in Louisiana, more than double the amount over the same time period last year.
In addition, the CPRA reports that "investigations into the chemical composition of MC252 [BP's Macondo well] oil samples demonstrate that submerged oil is NOT substantially weathered or depleted of most PAH's [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons]," and "disputes"findings relied on by the USCG [US Coast Guard] that Deepwater Horizon oil is non-toxic."
The agency also expresses concerns that "submerged oil may continue to pose long-term risk to nearshore ecosystems."
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