Oil Spills And Harmful Algal Blooms: Disasters With Shared Consequences For Communities

Natural and human-caused disasters like harmful algal blooms and oil spills are a part of life for many coastal communities. In the immediate aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, people were concerned that the spill might trigger blooms of harmful algae and questioned whether residual oil in the environment generated blooms in following years. Though the causes of these two types of disasters are different, their potential impacts to local communities and economies have similarities.