As one of the only scientists in the world who had ever studied the effects of oil on sea turtles, South Florida biologist Peter Lutz seemed a perfect candidate to advise BP in the aftermath of a disaster such as the Gulf spill.
Indeed, the giant petroleum company listed Lutz as a consultant in its 2009 disaster response plan.
The former professor of marine biology at Florida Atlantic University died in February 2005.
"I think he would have been fairly horrified and annoyed to be in the BP plan when he probably was never consulted," said FAU marine biologist Sarah Milton, a former colleague. "And then he would have been amused."
The listing of Lutz in the 2009 response plan was just one of several mistakes uncovered by The Associated Press in BP's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf. The AP said Wednesday that the plan for dealing with emergencies on the Deepwater Horizon rig was "riddled with omissions and glaring errors." Advertisement
In its analysis of the plan, AP found that under the heading "sensitive biological resources," the company listed several marine mammals, including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals, that do not live anywhere near the Gulf.
The names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida that are no longer in service.
In Houston, BP spokesman John Pack said the inclusion of Lutz's name in the 2009 response plan "was clearly an error, something we should have picked up."
When he died of pancreatic cancer at age 65, Lutz was well-known for his research on sea turtles and his role in several scientific societies. He joined FAU in 1991 after several years at the University of Miami, where he conducted one of the only experiments involving sea turtles and oil contamination.
According to Milton, Lutz and his UM colleagues added oil to a tank containing several sea turtles to study its effects. Those effects were "fairly dramatic" and detrimental, she said, but the study was ended before any of the turtles died.
A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Lutz also studied the effects on turtles of beach renourishment and latex balloon ingestion. He also invented a pop-up satellite tag used to track turtle movements.
"One of the complaints [Lutz] made often is that we don't have enough studies on physiology" of marine life affected by oil spills, Milton said.
"You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." --Dr. Francis Crick; Nobel laureate, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule
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