2,000 Year Old Coral Found Near BP Spill Site

2,000-year-old corals have been discovered near the site of the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists say.

On Wednesday the U.S. Geological Survey said that for the first time, it had determined the age of the Gulf's black coral. Before the BP well blew out on April 20, 2010, scientists had been studying the ancient and slow-growing corals they had found 1,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf, approximately 21 miles to northeast of the BP well.

"They're extremely old and extremely slow-growing," Nancy Prouty, a USGS scientist, told the Associated Press. "And there are big questions about their vulnerability and their ability for recovery."

Prouty said that scientists hadn't completed their assessment of the damage done to the ancient coral by the BP oil spill. Black corals need to feed on organic matter as it falls to the sea floor, and Prouty said it could take many years - perhaps even centuries - for the corals in the Gulf to recover from a disturbance to their ecosystems.

The black coral location may be crucial, since computer models and research cruises have determined that much of the deepwater oil moved to the southwest of the BP well, which means that it would be moving away from the black coral colony. But scientists have also found dead coral southwest of the well, and the surface oil slick was over the black coral colony during the spill, which is definitely not a good sign.

Black corals, which resemble undersea trees or brush, can be found all over the world and play an important role in marine ecosystems as a habitat for fish and other forms of life. According to the USGS corals grow extremely slowly, with a human fingernail growing 200 times faster than black corals..

When BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on April 20th, 11 workers were killed. The resulting environmental disaster unfolded over many weeks and saw more than 200 million gallons of oil leaking into the sea before the leak was finally stopped.