Amidst the thick mangroves, under the turquoise tranquil waters and along the shoreline of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, the world's worst peacetime oil spill once hit here and more than 30 years later, there are still a few signs of Ixtoc.
The massive spill in June of 1979 bears striking similarity to the BP Horizon Spill still gushing into the Gulf as a blowout preventer malfunctioned, failing to stop the flow of oil that would eventually dump nearly 3 and a half million barrels into the Bay of Campeche. The oil wouldn't just blanket the coastline here in Mexico, but eventually it would cover more than 160 miles of Texas beaches. Watch the latest video at <a href="http://video.foxnews.com/">FoxNews.com</a>
"It was a fairly similar to the one today, as we understand. It too was a blowout preventor that malfunctioned 50 miles north of the Mexican coast in the city of Ciudad Carmen in about 170 ft of water. Ixtoc blew from the 3rd of June 1979, to the 23rd of March 1980, almost 10 months. It was 140 million gallons in total the largest peacetime spill that has ever been recorded in history," says Dr. Wes Tunnell a marine biologist at Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
Dr. Tunnell was a new professor on the Texas coast at the time and has studied the aftermath over the course of the last 30 years. "I feel that learning from the past, that we know the sandy beaches will recover in 2 to 3 years, or maybe a little longer. The ones that I'm worried about are the salt marshes of the Mississippi Delta, particularly the eastern side, where the oil is starting to come in now. Those salt marshes are a ten on a scale on a 1 to 10, they will be the most damaged and the toughest to clean up."
If the aftermath from Ixtoc is any indication, the environment and its recovery process will surprise many worried about the future. Marine biologists feared the Gulf would be ruined from the oil, but much of it repaired itself within two or three years. Even with the positive signs, the surprise and the good news of Mother Nature's strength, there are still signs.
By car it took us more than two hours on one-lane roads to reach Isla Arena off the coast of Mexico's Yucatan. Another hour on a small open boat and we reached pristine coastline, thick with mangroves and little signs of the outside world. Our fisherman has known these waters since he was a child and says that the shellfish here still taste like oil and the once prominent oysters in these waters are still hard to find and have yet to recover from the onslaught of oil.
I am also told that when the tide goes out, you can see tar balls glisten in the powerful afternoon sun. Locals in this remote area of the world still recall the days when their beach went black and marine life seemed to disappear. They also worry that if the current spill isn't capped by fall, the natural current change will wash oil onto these shores once again.
Effects of the Ixtoc I oil spill on marine bird populations along the Texas Coast: Final report to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Padre Island National Seashore
Measuring the impact of the Ixtoc I oil spill on visitation at three Texas public coastal parks (TAMU-SG)
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