A key to unravelling how much damage the BP oil spill caused to sea life four years ago may be found in a tiny fish treadmill at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. This month a team of scientists at the school published a study concluding that mahi, a pelagic fish that occupies a big chunk of the commercial market, struggled to swim when exposed to crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon, even for just a brief time. Ed Mager, Post Doctoral Associate at the UM Rosenstiel School discusses the findings. Video by Emily Michot/Miami Herald Staff

In a lab on Virginia Key, a group of baby fish are being put through their paces on a tiny fish treadmill.

The inch-long mahi-mahi, being used as part of a study to assess damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that spread crude across the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days in 2010, were exposed when they were embryos to oil collected during the cleanup. Now, at 25 days old, the oil is doing exactly what scientists suspected it would do: hamper the swimming of one of the ocean’s fastest fish.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/06/19/4189064/um-study-finds-oil-from-bp-spill.html#storylink=cpy