According to the sources, the Gulf oil spill polluted a essential stretch of feeding habitat for whale sharks, probably killing some of the world's largest fish.

An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil (one barrel equals 42 gallons, or 159 liters) poured into an quarter south of the Mississippi River Delta, scientists said that wherever of one-third of all northern Gulf of Mexico (map) whale shark sightings have come about in new years.

The 45-foot-long (14-meter-long) fish is considered a helpless species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, still is an unknown to scientists.

Biologist Eric Hoffmayer whispered that this spill's collision came at the most terrible possible time and in the worst possible location for whale sharks. At the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory Eric Hoffmayer studies whale sharks.

Sightings completed that the animals were not able to stay away from the glossy at the surface, where the enormous fish may feed for seven to eight hours a day.

Hoffmayer noted that the oil may have blocked the fish's gills, disgusting them, or it might have impure their prey, even though no dead whale sharks have been found.