DAPHNE, Ala. — Dr. George Crozier, director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab since 1979, was made an honorary employee of Daphne Utilities by general manager Rob McElroy on Tuesday. That day, Crozier addressed the current state of Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico one year after the oil spill. He said the gulf and the bay are doing much better than originally anticipated.

Crozier said he has spent a lot of his time in the past year giving status updates on the local ecosystem, but he is glad to speak to anyone who will listen when he tells them seafood from the gulf is safe to consume.

“It is what I have been doing for just over the past year at this point and that is trying to explain what the consequences are of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico and where we stand now,” Crozier said.

“I enjoy gulf seafood. The reason I am doing these talks anywhere and everywhere I can is because the seafood is safe. The seafood is safe to eat, anything that is on the market, I promise you, has been scrutinized more in the past year than it was ever scrutinized before. Ironically, I don’t think the seafood was ever much in jeopardy.”

He only has reservations about oysters.

“We have no reason to be concerned — with the possible exception of oysters. Oysters do not have the same enzyme ability to deal with some of these toxins that the other animals do. Oysters will be scrutinized closer than any of the oysters,” Crozier said.

Crozier said there do not appear to be any short-term consequences from the oil spill as many scientists feared in the weeks following the disaster.

 “The spill was indeed unexpected and very much unprecedented in every sense of the world. I simply offer that because in the first month I would say that almost no one knew with any accuracy what the outcome would be. At this juncture, it appears that the short term impacts have been far, far less than we anticipated,” Crozier said.

He said the foreseen disaster was based off the Exxon-Valdez spill in Alaska, but the situations were not comparable.

“The problem we have is that we anticipated based on our images that we all have of the Exxon-Valdez spill of over 20 years ago. The problem that we have since figured out is that it was a bad comparison. There should have been no comparison to Exxon-Valdez. The environment was different, the oil was different, the circumstances were different and in every way, shape and form,” Crozier said.

“It now appears that the Gulf of Mexico was able to accommodate, accept, digest and deal with at least the immediate impacts of the spill far, far better than Prince William Sound in Alaska was.”

Crozier said the Gulf of Mexico has adapted over thousands of years to deal with natural leakages of oil.

The microbial community, the bacteria in the Gulf of Mexico are designed and have lived for thousands, maybe millions of years, eating oil that has always come into the Gulf of Mexico from natural leaks. We get almost 17 billion barrels a year that leaks naturally. It is like donuts to this bacterial community. I think we have the capacity to deal with it much better than we anticipated,” Crozier said.

The Eastern Shore is not through with the effects of the spill yet, Crozier said, and the long-term effects will continue to come to light for years to come.

“There are, however, residuals that we are going to have to deal with for some time, perhaps for an unknown time. The problems that we are having now are I think exaggerated by our lack of understanding of the original problem, our inability to communicate effectively to the general public what we believe is the situation as we see it right now,” Crozier said.

He also said there are a few benefits from the oil spill.

“The intriguing observation we are making now is that because the federal government would not allow fishing during the summer of 2010, all those fish should have been in somebody’s freezer and they are not. They are out there doing what fish do and we have larger fish populations than we have ever seen in my lifetime in this part of the Gulf of Mexico,” Crozier said.

He said the oil spill has also turned into a learning opportunity for scientists.

“This is one of the greatest experiments in understanding the Gulf of Mexico that we have ever seen. I think it will improve our knowledge of the gulf,” Crozier said.

According to Crozier, the waterways were not the part of the ecosystem most negatively affected by the oil spill. He said organisms have adapted to deal with the influx of oil, but humans have not developed the same coping mechanism.

“If it is a moderate or modest environmental insult, it has become a socio-economic calamity … I would like to understand the difference between the human components of the system not being able to respond as readily as the Gulf of Mexico itself did,” Crozier said.

“I have been here for 40 years and I have listened to people on both sides of the bay talk to me for 40 years about how they love the bay, they love the gulf, it is everything to our quality of life, it is the spirit and soul of the two coastal counties.

“What a load; it is in our pocketbook folks…,” he said, suggesting that people care more about the economic benefits than the aesthetic surroundings. “The recovery of the people is the challenge now for us. I can ensure you that the gulf and the bay are doing just fine. I think that eventually our people will make it.”