Deepwater Horizon Incident, Gulf of Mexico | Most Recent NOAA Update

Deepwater Horizon Incident, Gulf of Mexico | Most Recent NOAA Update

Deepwater Horizon Incident, Gulf of Mexico

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As the nation’s leading scientific resource for oil spills, NOAA has been on the scene of the Deepwater Horizon spill from the start, providing coordinated scientific weather and biological response services to federal, state and local organizations. More

Updated daily
Situation: Tuesday 11 May
Today weather conditions prevented vessel skimming and in-situ burning operations, but overflights and SCAT teams were in the field. Sea conditions are expected to moderate over the course of the week and marine operations are expected to recommence. Also today, NOAA Fisheries announced modifications to the area closed to fishing in the Gulf of Mexico due to the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill, which now will include federal waters seaward of Louisiana State waters in the vicinity of Timbalier Island, to waters off Florida’s Choctawhatchee Bay. These changes will leave more than 93 percent of the Gulf’s federal waters open for fishing, and supporting productive fisheries and tourism.

NASA mobilized its remote-sensing assets to help assess the spread and impact of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill at the request of U.S. disaster response agencies. NASA has deployed its instrumented research aircraft, the Earth Resources-2 (ER-2), to the Gulf. The agency is also making extra satellite observations and conducting
additional data processing to assist NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Department of Homeland Security in monitoring the spill.
NOAA is sending one of its top fisheries science directors to the Gulf this week to lead its effort to rapidly assess, test, and report findings about risks posed to fish in the Gulf of Mexico by contaminants from the
BP oil spill and clean-up activities.

Response to date

• Personnel were quickly deployed and approximately 13,000 are currently responding to protect the shoreline and wildlife.
  
• More than 460 vessels are responding on-site, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels to assist in containment and cleanup efforts—in addition to dozens of aircraft, remotely operated vehicles, and multiple mobile offshore drilling units.
  
• Approximately 1.4 million feet of boom (regular and sorbent) have been deployed to contain the spill—and approximately 1.4 million feet are available.
  
• Approximately 3.6 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.
  
• Approximately 372,000 gallons of dispersant have been deployed.
  
• More than 180,000 gallons are available.
  
• 14 staging areas have been set up to protect vital shoreline in all potentially affected Gulf Coast states (Biloxi, Miss., Pascagoula, Miss., Pensacola, Fla., Panama City, Fla., Dauphin Island, Ala., Grand Isle, La., Shell Beach, La., Slidell, La., Venice, La., Orange Beach, Al., Theodore, Al., Pass Christian, Ms., Amelia, La., and Cocodrie, La.).

NOAA’s Damage Assessment Remediation and Restoration Program (DARRP) is conducting a Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA). From past experience, NOAA is concerned about oil impacts to fish, shellfish, marine mammals, turtles, birds and other sensitive resources, as well as their habitats, including wetlands, mudflats, beaches, bottom sediments and the water column. Any lost uses of these resources, for example, fishery and beach closures, will also be evaluated. The focus currently is to assemble existing data on resources and their habitats and collect baseline (pre-spill impact) data. Data on oiled resources and habitats are also being collected.