Eyeless Shrimp? Report Raises Concerns in Gulf

Shrimp missing their eyeballs (and even eye sockets), fish covered in lesions, deformed crabs, and other mutated sea creatures are showing up in unsettling numbers in the Gulf of Mexico two years after the giant BP oil spill, according to an investigation by Al Jazeera English. "The fishermen have never seen anything like this," says one scientist at Louisiana State University. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this, either."

The sentiment is echoed by several others interviewed in the article, both fishermen and scientists. The BP disaster released 4.9 million barrels of oil into the water, and the company then poured in 1.9 million gallons of chemical dispersants to sink the oil. Biologists are pointing to the toxins in the dispersants as the catalysts behind the abnormalities. Despite the signs, both the state and BP says the local seafood is rigorously tested and safe to eat. (More Gulf of Mexico stories.)