It has been two years since 4,9 million barrels of oil were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. In the midst of the disaster, BP and its contractors did everything they could to keep people from seeing the scale of the disaster. But new photos released today offer some new insight into just how horrific the Gulf became for sea life.

The ONLY reason you are seeing these images today is because of a Freedom of Information Act Request that Greenpeace filed back in 2010. In it, they asked for any communication related to endangered and threatened Gulf species. The result? Greenpeace received a response from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that included more than 100 photos from the spill, including many of critically endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles, dead and covered in oil.

Says John Hocevar, a marine biologist who works for Greenpeace:

It just makes me furious. I had so many conversations with people in various government agencies working on the Gulf spill, and I feel like they were hiding things from all of us. The White House was sitting on this stuff for over two years, at the same time they were saying everything was fine, that the oil was gone, and while they were rushing ahead with plans for new drilling in the Gulf, the Arctic, elsewhere. It’s just not OK. This is not an acceptable type of collateral damage.

See some of the horrific images below:

[Source: Mother Jones]