By Science journalist Mark Schrope, aboard the research vessel Pelican “You’ve got to see this,” says Vernon Asper, an oceanographer with the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology team, rushing into the main lab on board the Pelican. Soon after, to those gathering in the small room where readings from the sampling rosette come […]
14 May 2010 13 May 2010 The COSMO-SkyMed radar image taken yesterday is somewhat ominous – it shows nearly all of the slick from the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and at 4,922 square miles (12,748 km2) it’s significantly larger than it appeared on May 13. BP / Gulf oil spill – Slick getting […]
Swaths of the gulf near Louisiana are oxygen-starved, or hypoxic. An annual surge in farm runoff, carried by the Mississippi into the Gulf, feeds algae blooms, which consume available oxygen as they decay. Fish leave the area and bottom-dwelling sea life is stressed or dies. The Gulf, Before the Spill Technorati Tags: ocean anoxia,dead zone,pollution,algae […]
By Christine Dell’Amore, National Geographic News Published May 13, 2010 If efforts fail to cap the leaking Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico (map), oil could gush for years—poisoning coastal habitats for decades, experts say. Last week the joint federal-industry task force charged with managing the spill tried unsuccessfully to lower a 93-ton […]
PORT FOURCHON, LA.—British energy giant BP declined to say Saturday whether its latest effort to contain the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill worked, as BP’s chief executive appeared to dismiss the disaster as “tiny.” The accident is threatening an ecological and environmental calamity along the U.S. Gulf Coast. With crude oil gushing unchecked from […]
By RUSSELL GOLD About 11 hours before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, a disagreement took place between the top manager for oil giant BP PLC on the drilling rig and his counterpart for the rig’s owner, Transocean Ltd., concerning the final steps in shutting down the nearly completed well, according to a worker’s sworn statement. Michael […]
By Bob Marshall, The Times-PicayuneMay 14, 2010, 7:00PM To the watching world the environmental threat that BP’s oil disaster poses to the nature-rich Louisiana coast is captured in images of beautiful birds or furry creatures crippled by thick black goo. But scientists who know these estuaries best are more concerned about a less photogenic community. […]
NASA/MODIS images have been too cloudy to be much use for May 12 and 13 (see the most recent image we processed, for May 11). But a radar image taken by the Italian COSMO-SkyMed system clearly shows most of the slick in stark detail. The slick covers 4,922 square miles (12,748 km2) on the radar […]
NOAA continues to provide scientific support including: modeling the trajectory and location of the oil, getting pre-impact shoreline samples surveys and baseline measurements, and planning for open water and shoreline remediation. NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science and NOAA Fisheries Southeast Fisheries Science Center are conducting bottlenose dolphin studies in Mississippi and Louisiana. The […]
By Gregory Mone, Contributor (May 14) — Since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill began three weeks ago, most eyes and cameras have been focused on the widening, orange slick. But now, as experts argue that the flow rate could far exceed the government’s estimate of 210,000 gallons a day, a team of independent scientists […]
