Chase Martin is a media relations intern for U.S. Campaigns at Oceana. This Op-Ed was adapted from one that appeared on Oceana's blog, The Beacon. Martin contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Florida's Gulf Coast is renowned for its soft white beaches, balmy weather, and calm, clear waters. It's also infamous for being a mecca of debris from oil-rig related tragedies, which until recently, were thought to have mostly finished their attack on Gulf-Coast beaches. But even after four years, trash from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is still washing ashore and devastating coastal environments and communities.

In February, a group from the Florida State Department of Environmental Protection discovered an 81-square-foot tar mat cruising the shallows off Pensacola beach. That's 1,250 pounds of oily garbage that slithered across almost 200 miles of seabed, damaging environments and amassing sand and marine fragments.

This is only a tiny fraction of the 200 million gallons of oil that spewed into the ocean during the 2010 oil spill,

MORE @ news.yahoo.com/tar-washing-ashore-shows-gulf-coast-not-back-201041756.html