When speaking about the environment we speak about the biotic(living) and abiotic(non living) factors. Oil spills not only affects the living environment but it also affects the non living environment. Many of us knows the Gulf of Paria is protected by mangroves.These mangroves are homes to a variety of organisms and also play an important role as they prevent erosion, maintain water quality and protect the shorelines from damaging storms, hurricane winds and floods. Now that we have stated the importance of mangroves we are going to look at how oil spills affect the mangroves and the rippling effects of a damaged mangrove. Again the effects are all based n several factors such as the composition of the oil and the length of time the roots were exposed to the oil and the amount of the oil the roots came into contact with. Light or refined oil such as gasoline no 2 oil and jet fuel contain relatively high amounts of the most water soluble and toxic compounds. These oils evaporate rapidly and impacts occur mostly when large oil spills strand on shore. Light fuels are absorbed by tree roots and can cause mortality of red and black mangroves within a time period of 24-48 hours. Crude oil and heavily refined products coat the roots reducing the ability of the tree to exchange gases. Because these are heavily refined oil they will tend to be more persistent which may lead to leave loss and possibly death. This leads to other organisms being affected as well as the shoreline of many beaches. So now that we have a general idea of how oil spills affect mangroves we can now compare it to the oil spills in the Gulf of Paria and how it affected the mangroves. It was reported by Petrotrin that the oil spill was crude oil, which is a heavily refined product. Therefore this oil coated the roots of trees making it difficult to exchange gases which will caused leaf loss and death.  This will have a rippling effect on organisms that use the mangroves as a habitat or feeding zone.

 Photographs showing the roots of mangroves covered in oil.