The now infamous Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, tragically killing 11 workers, on April 20. Amid the understandably growing tension over the looming environmental catastrophe, the arguments and incriminations now predictably center around money and where a lot of money is involved, common sense is sometimes elusive.

Making sense out of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, first and foremost, the tragedy is the loss of the lives of the eleven workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig, the tragedy is the growing list of casualties in the animal world, including dolphins, turtles, birds and the entire ecosystem along the four US Gulf States and the tragedy is the livelihoods of the thousands of people in the area who make a living from the sea. If Hurricane Katrina was Mother Nature's scourge, this is Mankind's follow-up. And how.

The date April 20, 2010 will certainly mark the biggest environmental disaster of all time, when the oil extraction platform Deepwater Horizon, BP, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and injuring 17. The deepwater platform operated at 1500 meters below sea level, about three times less than the depth of Brazil's pre-salt, and just 60 km from the coast of the State of Louisiana.

The National Guard of the United States estimates the spill at 5,000 barrels (800.000 liters) of oil daily, although dissenting voices, based on the video of the site, circulated only on May 13, estimate that it could be 12 times higher.  The huge oil slick is flowing in the direction of the Mississippi River Delta, and small quantities of oil reached the coast of the States of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi on May 3.

Satellite images allow a precise assessment of the extent of the calamity. The NASA ASTER satellite captured night images of the increasing spill on the 7th of May. The thermal photographs cover an area measuring 60 by 240 km, mostly over the Gulf of Mexico.

Seven dolphins and over 117 turtles have been washed up dead over the last two weeks on the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama. While there is no evidence as yet that they are linked to the BP Deepwater disaster, the coincidence is very great.

Scientists are still investigating the deaths, trying to find a cause, because none of the animals presents visual evidence as having been killed by the gigantic oil spill which has been belching 1 million liters of crude per day into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20.

Dr. Mobi Solangi, Director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, declared to Reuters news agency that "There is no question that the oil is in their habitat" yet claimed that "so far we have not seen any relationship with the deaths of either the turtles or the dolphins to oil".    

What exactly is going on in the Gulf of Mexico? When there are reports of media blackouts, then the natural reaction is to start investigating, and in the current environmental catastrophe, the more stones one turns, the more horrific the potential scenario becomes. While scare mongering is as pointless as it is dangerous, the truth remains that the media have the duty to inform.