What was the total impact (cost, beaches, wildlife, human suffering, etc.) of the Mexican oil spill in the gulf known as Ixtoc 1 in 1979?
Are they still cleaning it up? The Ixtoc 1 spill, which began June 3, 1979, and lasted for 10 months in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche, cost $42 million to contain and clean up, according to CNNmoney.com. The 480,000 tons of oil from that leak blanketed Mexican beaches and 150 miles of Texas coast. But Luis A. Soto, a deep-sea biologist who teaches at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, recently told McClatchy-Tribune Newspapers, “To be honest, considering the magnitude of the spill, we thought the Ixtoc spill was going to have catastrophic effects for decades. . . . But within a couple of years, almost everything was close to 100 percent normal again.” There were issues involving wildlife, as “marine life was reduced by 50 percent (in some zones), in others, 80 percent. The female population of an already-endangered species of sea turtles known as Kemp’s Ridley shrank to 300, perilously close to extinction,” McClatchy-Tribune reported. Fishing and tourism also struggled after the
