Panel: Feds blocked worst-case Gulf spill figures

7:16 p.m. ET, Wed., October 6, 2010

DINA CAPPIELLO
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could become and made other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis, according to a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster.

In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff describes "not an incidental public relations problem" by the White House in the wake of the April 20 accident.

Among other things, the report says, the administration made erroneous early estimates of the spill's size, and President Barack Obama's senior energy adviser went on national TV and mischaracterized a government analysis by saying it showed most of the oil was "gone." The analysis actually said it could still be there.

"By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem," the report says.

The administration disputed the commission findings, saying senior government officials "were clear with the public public what the worst-case flow rate could be."

In a statement Wednesday, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco and White House budget director Jeffrey Zients pointed out that in early May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told the public that the worst-case scenario could be more than 100,000 barrels a day, or 4.2 million gallons.

For the first time, the documents — which are preliminary findings by the panel's staff — show that the White House was directly involved in controlling the message as it struggled to convey that it, not BP, was in charge of responding to what eventually became the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Citing interviews with government officials, the report reveals that in late April or early May, the White House budget office denied a request from NOAA to make public its worst-case estimate of how much oil could spew from the blown-out well. The Unified Command — the government team in charge of the spill response — also was discussing the possibility of making the numbers public, the report says.

The White House budget office has traditionally been a clearinghouse for administration domestic policy.

The report shows "the political process was in charge and science really does not have the role that was touted," said Christopher D'Elia, dean of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

But Jerry Miller, head of the White House science office's ocean subcommittee, told The Associated Press in an interview at a St. Petersburg, Fla., scientific conference on the oil spill that he didn't think the budget office censored NOAA.

"I would very much doubt that anyone would put restrictions on NOAA's ability to articulate factual information," Miller said.

The explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers, spewed 206 million gallons of oil from the damaged oil well, and sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

BP's drilling permit for the well originally estimated the worst-case scenario to be a leak of 6.8 million gallons per day. In late April, just after the spill began, the Coast Guard and NOAA received an updated worst-case estimate of 2.7 million to 4.6 million gallons per day.

While those figures were used as the basis for the government's response to the spill — they appeared on an internal Coast Guard situation report and on a dry-erase board in NOAA's Seattle war room — they were never announced to the public, according to the report.

However, they were, in fact, announced, as news stories from May 2 to May 5 show, though the figures received little attention at the time.

For more than a month after the explosion, government officials were telling the public that the well was releasing 210,000 gallons per day. In early August, in its final estimate of the spill's flow, the government said it was gushing 2.6 million gallons per day — close to the worst-case predictions.

The documents also criticize Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, saying that during a series of morning-show appearances on Aug. 4, she misrepresented the findings of a federal analysis of where the oil went and incorrectly portrayed it as a scientific assessment that was peer-reviewed by inside and outside experts.

"I think it's also important to note that our scientists have done an initial assessment, and more than three-quarters of the oil is gone," Browner said on NBC's "Today" show.

But the analysis never said it was gone, according to the commission. It said it was dispersed, dissolved or evaporated — meaning it could still be there. And while NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco was more cautious in her remarks at a news conference at the White House later that day, the commission staff accuses the two senior officials of contributing to the perception that the government's findings were more exact than they actually were.

Florida State University professor Ian MacDonald, who has repeatedly clashed with NOAA and the Coast Guard over the size of the spill, the existence of underwater plumes and oil in the sea floor, said he felt gratified by the report.

From the beginning, there was "a contradiction between discoveries and concerns by academic scientists and statements by NOAA," MacDonald said in an interview with the AP at the oil spill conference.

And he said it is still going on. MacDonald and Georgia Tech scientist Joseph Montoya said NOAA is at it again with statements saying there is no oil in ocean floor sediments. A University of Georgia science cruise, which Montoya was on, found ample evidence of oil on the Gulf floor.

___

Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed reporting from St. Petersburg, Fla.

Gulf seafloor coated in oil from BP spill

Samples taken from the seafloor near BP's blown-out wellhead indicate miles of murky, oily residue sitting atop hard sediment. Moreover, inside that residue are dead shrimp, zooplankton, worms and other invertebrates.

"I expected to find oil on the sea floor," Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia marine sciences professor, said Monday morning in a ship-to-shore telephone interview. "I did not expect to find this much. I didn't expect to find layers two inches thick."

The scientists aboard the research vessel Oceanus suspect it's all from the BP spill, but will have to wait until they return to shore this week to confirm it's the same oil source.

"It has to be a recent event," Joye said. "There's still pieces of warm bodies there."

If it is BP oil, it could undermine the federal government's estimate that 75 percent of the spill either evaporated, was cleaned up or was consumed by natural microbes.

What the scientists do already know is that the oil is not coming naturally from below the surface.

"What we found today is not a natural seep," Joye wrote in her blog on Sept. 5 when the first surprise sediment was found.

"The near shore sediments contained grayish muddy clay and a thin layer of orange-brown oil at the surface," she added. Oil seeping naturally would create an oily stain throughout the sediment cores, but these samples only had oil at the top.

"The oil obviously came from the top (down from the water column) not the bottom (up from a deep reservoir)," Joye wrote.

'Slime highway'
The researchers also have a name for it: a slime highway.

That's because they're confident much of the oil was trapped by mucus coming from microbes that feast on oil in a natural process that helps break up the contaminant. Those microbes are well documented, but not that their mucus was sinking along with oil to the seafloor.

"The organisms that break down oil excrete mucus — copious amounts of mucus," Joye told National Public Radio. "So it's kind of like a slime highway from the surface to the bottom. Because eventually the slime gets heavy and it sinks."

Another factor that could be trapping the oil was the earlier use of chemical dispersants, which might have made the oil so small that it wasn't buoyant enough to rise.

Joye wrote that the scientists call the substance "'oil aggregate snow' — because it settled down the water column to the seafloor just like snow falls from the sky to the ground."

"If you take a close look at the snow layer, oil aggregates are clearly visible," she added. "Also visible are pteropod shells (which must have been recently deposited because the shells dissolve rapidly) and remnants of zooplankton (skeletons) and benthic infauna (dead worms and their tubes)."

The researchers took new samples on Monday and Sunday, and hope to take several more, especially closer to the wellhead, before they return.

"It's weird the stuff we found last night," Joye said. "Some of it was really dense and thick."

The samples have come from seafloors at depths ranging from 300 to 4,000 feet deep.

Since the well was capped on July 15, and after some 200 million gallons flowed into the Gulf, there have been signs of resilience on the surface and the shore. Sheens have disappeared, while some marshlands have shoots of green. This seeming recovery is likely a result of massive amounts of chemical dispersants, warm waters and a Gulf that is used to degrading massive amounts of oil, scientists say.

Animal deaths also are far short of worst-case scenarios. But at the same time, a massive invisible plume of oil has been found under the surface, shifting scientists' concerns from what can be easily seen to what can't be.

For Ian MacDonald, a Florida State University biological oceanographer who wasn't part of Joye's team, the latest findings confirm that government assessments about how much oil remains — especially a report on the subject by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in August — were too optimistic.

The oil "did not disappear," he said. "It sank."

Some skeptics
Not all scientists agree with this assessment.

Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University chemist who has analyzed the spill for NOAA, doubted much oil was resting on the bottom. He said the heavier components in oil — the asphalts — make up only about 1 percent of the oil that was spilled.

And Roger Sassen, an organic geochemist at Texas A&M University who has studied natural oil seeps, said so much oil seeps naturally into the Gulf each year that it's hard to argue that the BP spill will make a significant difference.

Nonetheless, the big questions now are exactly how much oil is at the bottom and how many organisms are being exposed to it, said Robert Carney, an oceanographer and deep-sea expert at Louisiana State University. The answers to those questions could shed some light on the unseen damage to wildlife from the oil spill.

"Deep-sea animals, in general, tend to produce fewer offspring than shallower water animals, so if they are going to have a population impact, it may be more sensitive in deep water," he said. "There is also some evidence that deep-sea animals live longer than shallower water species, so the impact may stay around longer."

At first, scientists, the media and the federal government focused their attention on tracking rainbow sheens approaching land, tar balls hitting beaches, measuring oil in marshes and scouting for oiled birds and sea turtles. But a spate of recent studies increasingly points to the deep.

NOAA's Aug. 4 pronouncement that the oil was mostly gone also indicated that some 53 million gallons remained in the Gulf. At the time, federal officials said some of that could be on the sea floor, adding that the rest was mostly broken down naturally or by the widespread use of chemical dispersants.

"As we get into weathered oil, there is more likelihood that it will get into the sediment" on the seafloor, said Steve Murawski, chief scientist at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of NOAA.

Getting a handle on where the oil is at extreme depths will not be easy. Scientists will have to use expensive 1,000-pound devices that look like moon landers. The spindly legged machines land on the bottom and shoot tubes into the sea floor to collect 20-inch-long samples.

The terrain is exceedingly difficult. The area where the busted BP well sits is on the continental slope, formed by millions of years of deposits from the Mississippi River. It's a region of bumps and valleys, salt domes, canyons and slopes.

Government scientists acknowledge they've not done enough to look for oil in the obscure corners of the Gulf's bottom, but promise to do a better job.

Joye's latest discovery backs up the findings of a University of South Florida crew that reported pulling up oily sediment in August.

Source: MSNBC.com

Millions of Migrating Birds Heading to Oil

Millions of Migrating Birds Heading to Oil

September 8, 2010 9:38:00 AM

Larry O'Hanlon

Nearly five million Migratory birds from Canada are now winging their way south across North America, and many of them could be in for a nasty shock when they reach the oily marshes and beaches along the Gulf Coast.

"There's a lurking time bomb for many waterfowl and shorebirds that breed in Canada's boreal forest and winter or stop in the Gulf," said Jeff Wells, senior scientist at the Boreal Songbird Initiative.

There are several concerns ornithologists have about the birds. First of all, they could come into direct contact with oil that's present in many salt marshes, as well as just under the surface of shores and islands off Louisiana.

Then there is the problem of food. Many shorebirds eat small invertebrates that live in the sand along the shore. Now a lot of that sand is saturated with oil just below the surface, which has wiped out the invertebrates.

"The birds are actually dipping their bills down into the oil," said Wells.

The marshes, shores and islands of the Gulf Coast are a bottleneck for birds heading south, as they provide the last chance for many of these birds to fatten up before flying 500 miles across the Gulf to their wintering grounds in the Caribbean or South America. It's arguably one of the word's the worst places to have a major environmental disaster, said Melanie Driscoll, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society's Louisiana Coastal Initiative.

In order to see whether migrating birds get mired directly in oil, or if there are any other surprises in bird behavior or health due to the oil spill, the Audubon Society is planning on expanding teams of volunteer and professional bird watchers to monitor what happens in the coming months, and even years.

Among the first things that might be observed, said Driscoll, is a desperate search for food. If shorebirds can't find food, they will start moving around, looking for it in other areas.

"Migrant birds have very plastic behavior," said Driscoll. "We should be able to see changes in the use of habitat."

Driscoll said she recently visited one of the barrier islands off Louisiana and confirmed Wells' concern about the oil. She found oil-saturated sand just a half inch from the surface of the sand. The oil-soaked sand went down as far as she dug, which was about 15 inches, she said. That's very bad news for shorebirds.

"We're not really sure what will happen," Driscoll told Discovery News. Birds might fail to find enough food and then not complete their migration, search much further and find food, or try to fly without eating enough, and not make it.

"To get answers, we're really looking at these long-term monitoring efforts."

It could take years to sort out the effects to migrating birds, because they are difficult to count and, by their nature, move around a lot.

In the case of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the effects to birds are still being seen because oil is still surfacing on the beaches -- 21 years later. But because the Gulf Coast is so much warmer, Driscoll and others hope that the bacterial degradation of the oil will happen faster than in Alaska's colder Prince William Sound.

"What's really going to matter is the long term impacts to this ecosystem," said Driscoll. "It's a bad place to have a really bad natural disaster."

Source: Discovery Online 

Seaswarm Brings Swarm Robotics To Oil Spill Cleanup

by Evan Ackerman (source: BotJunkie)

Getting oil out of water isn’t that hard, on principle. What is hard is getting a huge amount of oil out of an even huger amount of water. If you think about it, this is really a perfect task for a swarm of robots, since it’s simple and repeatable and just needs to be done over and over (and over and over and over) again. With this in mind, MIT’s Senseable City Lab has created Seaswarm, a swarm of networked oil spill cleanup robots:


Seaswarm is designed to be simple, cheap, and efficient. To collect oil, the robots use a wide belt covered in a special hydrophobic nanofabric (about the consistency of a paper towel) that sucks 20 times its own weight in oil (and other pollutants) out of water. The belt moves around like a treadmill, which passes the befouled nanofabric back to be cleaned while simultaneously propelling the robot forward. The video talks about heat being used to separate oil from the nanofiber, while the description on the Seaswarm website makes it seems like the oil is squeezed out using rollers… Whatever floats your robot, I guess.

What I’m not too sure about is where all of that captured oil goes. Using their solar panels for power the bots can collect for several weeks at a time, and the more oil they collect, the heavier they’ll get, and the more energy it’ll take to keep them moving. The website does mention that the oil will be ‘digested,’ which I assume implies microbes, but they’ll either have to collect oil very slowly or have some wicked crazy hungry bugs to be able to get around the problem.
Seaswarm is designed from the water up to utilize swarm behaviors. To combat a spill the size of the recent one in the gulf, about 5000 fully autonomous Seaswarm units would cooperate for a month, using GPS and WiFi to organize themselves for most efficient coverage. And of course, you get all the usual swarm benefits of scalability, adaptability, and robustness.

While Seaswarm as a whole is currently just a concept, they have built an actual working prototype (in the pic above), which was just tested out on the Charles river in Boston, I guess because the designers figured they’d teach the robot some humility when it comes to pollution clean-up.
[ Seaswarm ]

BP Abandons Arctic Drilling Interests in Greenland

With a rubber stamp of disapproval in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil company is reportedly having difficulty convincing other countries to partake in an offshore handshake. The Guardian learned that BP has relented on its interest in procuring an exploration license in Greenland. A company spokesman told the paper that it removed itself from bid-round contention, and further sources note that the decision stemmed from a mutual agreement between BP and Greenland over the inappropriateness of the oil company's participation. In the oil world, this is code for 'we're breaking up', 'you're out of the club' or other relevant adult adages. (Can BP ever rebuild its reputation?) The setback, which follows the announcement this week of a major find in the region by British rival Cairn Energy, is the first sign that the Gulf of Mexico disaster may have permanently damaged BP's ability to operate — not just in US waters, but in other environmentally-sensitive parts of the world. Source: Times Mobile

Gulf Waste Heads to Landfills, Problems Ahead

AP / Reuters - Times Mobile

(NEW ORLEANS) -- The cleanup of history's worst peacetime oil spill is generating thousands of tons of oil-soaked debris that is ending up in local landfills, some of which were already dealing with environmental concerns. The soft, absorbent boom that has played the biggest role in containing the spill alone would measure more than twice the length of California's coastline, or about 2,000 miles. More than 50,000 tons of boom and oily debris have made their way to landfills or incinerators, federal officials told The Associated Press, representing about 7% of the daily volume going to nine area landfills. (See pictures of BP oil spill victims.) A month after the oil stopped flowing into the Gulf, the emphasis has shifted toward cleanup and disposal of oily trash at government-approved landfills in coastal states. Environmental Protection Agency officials say the sites meet federal regulations, are equipped to handle the influx of waste and are being monitored closely, although three sites have state environmental issues. State records show two are under investigation and one was cited in May for polluting nearby waters. (See pictures of protests against BP.) Some residents and experts question the wisdom of adding crude-covered refuse to dumps, since it could take years for potential problems to surface. They worry about the impact on groundwater if contaminants leach past liners enclosing the decaying garbage. "Common sense would tell you you probably shouldn't keep dumping there if there are already problems," said Eric Schaeffer, a former head of the EPA's enforcement office who now heads a Washington-based legal advocacy group. "EPA needs to be able to say why despite the violations and discharges these are safe." Weathered oil is less toxic than fresh oil, the EPA says, but can still contain some levels of benzene and other risky chemicals. Both BP and the EPA are sampling the waste each week at the landfills, and the EPA and U.S. Coast Guard officials alike say so far it has not turned out to be hazardous. In some landfills, the spill waste is being mixed directly with regular household and industrial trash, which can contain chemicals, plastics and food. It is too soon to tell if the potential hazards from the oily waste would be greater than any risks posed by what's already in the landfills, experts say. That will depend on the volume of the Gulf trash, the mass of industrial chemicals already there and how all those agents interact over time, said Conrad Volz, who directs the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. In the meantime, the alternative to using already troubled landfills is placing oily waste in other dumps without environmental issues -- where oily waste's potential impacts could be tracked separately, experts say. "The oily waste may not be the most toxic thing in those landfills," said Kurt Pennell, an environmental engineer at Tufts University who sits on a National Research Council committee studying groundwater problems near landfills and Superfund sites. "But obviously if ... the landfill isn't well controlled, that is problematic." EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus, who oversees the agency's waste management plans, said the landfills can handle the oily waste properly. "The landfills ... have the system in place, the kind of liner, the kind of monitoring systems to manage this so that there are not environmental impacts," Stanislaus said in an interview. "If there are any issues of concern, we will revisit." The Gulf trash's trip to the landfill begins in oiled marshes and beaches where tar balls washed up regularly. Recently, near the mouth of the Mississippi, workers standing in small boats collected 16,000 feet of oily absorbent boom in one day alone from waters surrounding one oil-covered marsh. The boom is wrung out and dried before being shipped to landfills or incinerators. Concerns about pollution prompted Harrison County, Miss., supervisors to decide against accepting more oily waste in their coastal county, which is recovering from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Waste is being trucked to the Chastang Landfill 25 miles north of Mobile, Ala., where state officials are investigating high levels of mercury and barium found in the dump's groundwater monitoring wells. Nearby residents said they were worried that more chemicals were coming to the facility. "We already got enough problems here, and now they're going to bring us the oil and everything that comes out of those Gulf beaches?" said Lawrence Andry, 70. The landfill's owner, Waste Management, believes the water contamination is the result of naturally occurring metals in the soil, not the dump, and is performing tests, said spokesman Ken Haldin. Gulf waste also is taken to the county-run Magnolia Landfill about 60 miles south in Summerdale, Ala., which is being investigated for groundwater tainted with arsenic, acetone and other pollutants. State officials fined the dump $30,000 last month for failing to properly monitor methane flares used to burn off gas from the heap. Ed Fox, who manages the facility, said people should not worry because the well water used to monitor pollution is tested twice a year. The Colonial Landfill in Sorrento, La., which is receiving Gulf waste, was cited in May for exceeding its permitted spills into a stream feeding the Lake Pontchartrain basin 11 times last year. State officials said the dump fixed the problem last month, but got another state citation for failing to show inspectors log books and install proper barriers around its monitoring wells -- problems the operator says were addressed. Louisiana environmental authorities said Friday they are still in violation. When informed that three landfills had issues, Stanislaus said EPA officials had visited the facilities and knew of the deficiencies, but that didn't disqualify them from accepting spill waste. "We take these issues very seriously," he said. "If we find any major violations at any landfill that would impact the health of communities, and the state doesn't step in and act swiftly ... the on-scene coordinator and EPA will step in and stop any waste shipment." BP's three waste hauling contractors say they're following strict procedures to ensure safe disposal, as do operators of the receiving dumps. Houston-based Waste Management Inc. has a contract to dispose of waste from Mississippi, Alabama and part of the Florida Panhandle. The rest of Florida is handled by Phoenix-based trash hauler Republic Services Inc., and Heritage Environmental Services has the BP contract for Louisiana. Burke reported from Fresno, Calif.

Deep Water Dead Zone Predicted in the Gulf - Discovery News

http://news.discovery.com/earth/oil-spill-dead-zone.html

Deep Water Dead Zone Predicted in the Gulf

August 23, 2010 11:20:00 AM

The oil gusher on the Gulf seabed may be stopped, but much of the spilled oil still lurks in a plume of oil and dissolved methane gas 3,200-4,300 feet below the surface.

New research predicts that this plume will likely create a low-oxygen "dead zone" inhospitable to life in these deep waters, as microbes consume the oil and gas entrained in the plume.

The cold temperatures in the plume will slow the growth of the microbes compared to microbes acting at the surface. Because of this slower growth, the team predicts that it will be sometime in the fall before the oxygen levels hit their minimum.

But weak currents at that depth mean that the low oxygen levels may persist for a long time, with little mixing to bring in oxygenated waters: the team estimates it will be a couple of years before the oxygen levels return to normal.

The findings, now in press at the journal Geophysical Research Letters, predict that the zone will be similar in size to the well-known seasonal dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River caused by nutrient runoff upriver, though the new zone will remain within about 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the spill site.

"The area of the seasonal dead zone on the shelf is much larger, but it's much thinner," said study author Robert Hallberg of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, NJ. "This one is a smaller area, but it's thick. It's still a small area compared to the Gulf of Mexico."

Many researchers have been speculating that the deepwater plume would create a dead zone as microbes ate the undersea oil and gas, consuming oxygen in the process. The new work combines the best estimates for how much oil was released with detailed models of ocean currents and information about typical microbial oil degradation rates to show that the conditions in the Gulf should, indeed, produce one.

Unlike the seasonal dead zone, which occurs in shallow waters, the oil-caused zone will be deep enough that fisheries shouldn't be affected. "I'm not expecting that this is going to have really dire consequences for people," Hallberg said. "There may be consequences for deep ecosystems."

"It's almost a separate ocean down there," agreed Monty Graham of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, who observed oxygen depletion in shallower waters following the spill. "That doesn't mean it's not important for diversity. We don't know the impact on the deep-diving marine mammals that might be going down searching for food."

While this study predicts oxygen depletion near the spill site, plume measurements made in June and published in Science last week showed very little oxygen consumption by microbial oil degradation.

"On the face of it, it might appear to be in contradiction to what we are saying," Hallberg said. "but if you take into account the temperature, the oxygen depletion should be peaking in the fall. Those observations from June may have been taken too soon and too close to the source so that the oxygen drawdown may not have been realized yet."

Another possibility, Graham said, is that the oil degradation rate estimates that the team used in their simulations may not match those of the actual microbial community in the plume. "It could be a time lag difference that the community of microbes hasn't established itself and therefore it's not operating at its maximum efficiency."

The study also provided information about the spill's toxicity by estimating the concentrations of various oil components in the deepwater plume over time.

"We weren't finding widespread concentrations of the oil that would be acutely toxic at the level that kills organisms over a couple of days," Hallberg said.

"I am less worried about the hypoxia than I am about the potential chronic effects of these hydrocarbons on the organisms and larvae," said Nancy Kinner , head of the Center for Spills in Environment at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

"What we really don't know is if you have a low dose -- a low concentration in the water for a long exposure -- what's the chronic impact going to be?"

Hallberg agreed. "We know that compounds like toluene and benzene are regulated as known human carcinogens. You could imagine that there could be something similar for marine organisms, or something that affects development, or something that doesn't actually kill them. That's something where I think there's going to be a lot of research in the coming year."

Microbes Munching Gulf Oil - Discovery News

http://news.discovery.com/earth/oil-microbes-bacteria-plume.html

Microbes Munching Gulf Oil

August 24, 2010 1:01:00 PM

Oil-degrading microbes in the deep ocean have been munching away on the Gulf of Mexico oil plume at rates faster than expected for the cold temperatures found almost 4,000 feet below the water's surface, according to research published today.

"This paper is great news," said Nancy Kinner, director of the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. "I think this paper is another piece in the puzzle showing us that degradation was occurring and was occurring fairly rapidly, even at the cold temperatures."

The results, published today in the journal Science, came from measurements taken between May 25 and June 2. The team has also made follow-up observations since the leak was stopped on July 15. The recent figures indicate that the bacteria -- plus dilution into clean water -- have made quick work of the oil plume.

"Within two weeks we saw the plume entirely disappear," study lead author Terry Hazen of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., told Discovery News. "We have not been able to detect this plume at all for the last three weeks. They haven't been able to detect oil at the surface. What we do find is that the bacteria are still there."

"Slowly the bacteria will go back to natural levels, assuming that there's no more carbon input," Hazen said.

The team used a long list of methods to compare water inside and out of the plume. They measured levels of oil-related compounds, identified what microbes were present at what quantities, and surveyed which genes were active in the microbes' metabolisms.

Compared to water outside the plume, the oil-laden waters were enriched in microbes known to consume oil at cold temperatures, according to the team's analysis. The researchers also found that many genes responsible for oil degradation were active in these organisms.

The degradation rates estimated by the team were higher than other measurements for the deepwater temperature of 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), but they are not unprecedented, Hazen said.

"This is what we expected because the Gulf of Mexico receives the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every year in seeps of oil," he said. Since the waters continuously receive oil from natural seeps on the sea floor, the Gulf's deep marine microbes have evolved to eat oil.

"This is the only carbon source that they have, so naturally they've become adapted to using this well," Hazen said. The results suggest that these organisms were at the ready when the plume formed.

While the team measured relatively fast degradation rates, they found fairly low overall oil concentrations and little resulting depletion of the oxygen dissolved in the water.

While the study is good news in the context of a disaster, the findings do not mean that everything is back to normal in these waters, Kinner emphasized.

"The book is still open on whether there are impacts on organisms that may have been exposed, or to larvae that may have been exposed," she said. "This shows the power of biodegradation as a mechanism for the weathering of the oil. This does not mean that there are not some organisms that were impacted."

Executive Order for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes

The President has issued an Executive Order (EO) that establishes the nation's first comprehensive national policy for the stewardship of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes. The EO adopts the final recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, and directs federal agencies to take steps to implement them. It also creates an interagency National Ocean Council to strengthen ocean governance, and provide sustained, high-level focus on the national priority objectives for action to advance the national policy.

"Protecting our oceans, coasts and Great Lakes is critical to the health of our communities, vibrancy of our economy and overall security of our nation," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "The new national policy provides a clear road map for all federal agencies to work together, with local partners, to protect our vital waters for future generations. EPA is proud to have played a role in the development of this plan and the continued protection of our treasured natural resources."

The EO, final recommendations, other key documents, and the full press release can found at the National Ocean Council website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/oceans.

Source: EPA Waterheadlines

Most Abundant Food Source Disappearing

In oceans around the world, there has been a surprisingly large and extensive decline in phytoplankton -- the tiny algae that keep marine food webs afloat.

The drifting green flecks have been dying off for at least a century, with a staggering 40 percent decline since 1950, according to a new study.

Phytoplankton make up half of all plant matter around the globe, said marine ecologist Daniel Boyce, whose study appears this week in the journal

Nature. Its disappearance threatens the stability of climate, the well-being of fisheries and the overall health of the oceans.

"It's hard to really imagine phytoplankton could be so important because most people don't see them in their daily lives. They're microscopic and they live out at sea," said Boyce, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. "But everything that happens to them affects the entire marine food chain, including us."

Some recent satellite images have shown the ocean turning from green to blue as a result of phytoplankton declines, but those data stretch back only 13 years. Other studies have offered mixed results.

To get a more accurate picture and to look further into the past, Boyce and colleagues collected a half-million measurements of ocean clarity from a public data set that dated back to 1899.

Over the last century-plus, analyses showed, phytoplankton levels have dropped by one percent each year in eight out of 10 large ocean regions. The greatest decline occurred in areas around the poles, near the equator and in the open oceans. The rate of disappearance picked up after 1950, totaling a 40 percent drop-off since then.

"It's really big," said David Siegel, a marine scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "I'm a little leery about how big that number is."

The scientists can't yet say what's causing the mass die-off of phytoplankton, but temperature data offer a clue. The declines were worst in places where the surface of the sea has warmed the most. Warmer ocean water limits the amount of nutrients that can get from the depths to the surface. Phytoplankton need those nutrients to live.

With less phytoplankton around, fish have less to eat. As the decline works its way up the food chain, fishermen will have less to catch and fish-eaters less to eat. Phytoplankton even affect climate by taking up carbon dioxide and absorbing heat.

"Everyone looks at blue oceans and goes: 'Isn't that beautiful?'" Siegel said. "But a blue ocean is full of nothing. You really want something, and we're only making more of the blue ocean."

Source: Discovery News
http://news.discovery.com/earth/phytoplankton-oceans-food-web.htmlOcean's

100 Days in, Oil Spill Questions Still Unanswered

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster reached the 100-day mark Wednesday with hopes high BP can finish the job, but years of legal wrangles and probes lie ahead even after the well is killed.

BP aims to start the "static kill" on Sunday or Monday, pumping heavy drilling mud and cement down through the cap at the top of the well that has sealed it for the past two weeks.

Five days later a relief well should intercept the damaged well, allowing engineers to check the success of the "static kill" and cement in the area between the drill pipe and the well bore.

The so-called "bottom kill" should finally plug the reservoir once and for all, but it will not answer how the catastrophe was allowed to occur and who is responsible.

While the last surface patches of toxic crude biodegrade rapidly in the warm waters of the Gulf, the long-term impact of what is thought to be the biggest accidental oil spill ever may not be realized for decades.

As the focus shifts to the clean-up in the marshes and beaches of the Gulf coast, so it does to the Justice Department investigation and state probes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that a team has been established to examine whether the notoriously close ties between BP and federal regulators contributed to the April 20 disaster.

The "BP squad" will also probe rig operator Transocean and Halliburton, the oil services company which had finished cementing the well only 20 hours before the rig exploded, the paper reported.

If BP needs a reminder of the long legal road ahead as it tries to rebuild its reputation, one will be provided on Thursday as lawyers at a session in Boise, Idaho set the stage for a potential trial of the century.

The proceedings will examine whether complaints from around 200 plaintiffs can be consolidated and determine where the hearings should take place and under which judge.

They will also give trial lawyers a test run for the arguments they will make during what could be years-long legal proceedings against the oil behemoths.

BP announced Tuesday it would replace gaffe-prone British CEO Tony Hayward with Bob Dudley, an American, in a bid to repair its tattered reputation.

It also posted a quarterly loss of $16.9 billion and set aside $32.2 billion to pay costs associated with the spill.

While BP has said it is the "responsible party" for the clean-up because it leased the Deepwater Horizon rig and owned the leaking Macondo well, it maintains it is not to blame for the disaster.

It has set up a $20-billion fund to pay compensation to the battered fishing, oil, and tourism industries, and must pay civil damages for each of the up to 5.2 million barrels (218.4 million gallons) spilt.

Source: Discovery News
http://news.discovery.com/earth/gulf-oil-spill-100-days.html

Chasing an Oiled Brown Pelican

Here are images of an oiled brown pelican that we chased for a short distance before capture.

At Risk: Nesting Birds & Island Rookeries

The inner waters of the Mississippi Delta in Louisiana are home to several island rookeries. Some of the smallest islands contain the greatest mix of nesting seabird species: pelicans, terns, cranes, herons, spoonbills. 

Young Roseate Spoonbills

Brown pelicans among the mangrove

Pelican chicks on the nest

Trees filled with Roseate Spoonbills

Oil & Cleanup - Bay Jimmy, Louisiana

Here are some images from near Bay Jimmy, June 20 & 21. This area is approximately 20 miles INLAND from the Gulf.

A patch of oil with oil sheen

Oiled salt marsh

Oiled shoreline, booms, and a VOO (vessel of opportunity) skimmer

VOO skimmer

 Suction trucks on a barge

Tug moving barge with suction trucks on board

Attempting to clean oiled salt marsh grasses using low-pressure water spray

Rehabilitated Brown Pelicans Relocated to Texas National Wildlife Refuge

June 24, 2010

More than 132 brown pelicans exposed to oil along the Louisiana Coast have been rehabilitated, transported on Coast Guard planes and released at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas in the past week. The refuge was picked since it meets the important coastal habitat needs of the pelicans for breeding. Other refuges along the Texas coast are being considered for more releases in the coming weeks.

Source: US Fish & Wildlife Service
http://www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill/index.html

Oiled Shore Miles & Amount of Dispersants Used to Date

And you say you wanted to go SWIMMING this weekend?! I don't THINK so!

Amount of Dispersants Used
• Surface dispersant used: approximately 1.03 million gallons
• Subsea dispersant: more than 577,000 gallons
• Total dispersant used: approximately 1.61 million gallons

Shoreline impacted:
• approximately 423 miles of Gulf Coast shoreline is currently oiled
• approximately 259 miles in Louisiana
• 48 miles in Mississippi, 47 miles in Alabama
• 69 miles in Florida

Source: US Fish & Wildlife Deepwater Horizon Response
http://www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill/whatyou.html

US FWS Threat Assessment

The US Fish & Wildlife Service reports that they have 598 personnel actively engaged in response to the Deepwater Horizon/BP Oil Spill. FWS is also reporting that there are 36 National Wildlife Refuges at risk from the BP Oil Spill (http://www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill/refuges.html). These precious national resources are home to dozens of threatened and endangered species, including West Indian manatees, whooping cranes, Mississippi sandhill cranes, wood storks and four species of sea turtles.

Many species of wildlife face grave risk from the spill.

Birds can be exposed to oil as they float on the water or dive for fish through oil-slicked water. Oiled birds can lose the ability to fly and can ingest the oil while preening.

Sea turtles such as loggerheads and leatherbacks can be impacted as they swim to shore for nesting activities. Turtle nest eggs may be damaged if an oiled adult lies on the nest.

Oil has the potential to persist in the environment long after a spill and have long-term impacts on fish and wildlife.

For More information on the Effects of Oil on Wildlife and Habitat, see http://www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill/pdfs/DHJICFWSOilImpactsWildlifeFactSheet.pdf

Source: US Fish & Wildlife Service
http://www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill/index.html

Four states having set up their own websites for Gulf Oil Spill volunteers

The US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) recently provided the following information for those who wish to assist along the Gulf Coast hit by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Four states have set up their own websites for volunteers. These are:

• Louisiana: http://www.volunteerlouisiana.gov/
• Mississippi: http://www.volunteermississippi.org/1800Vol/OpenIndexAction.do
• Florida: http://www.volunteerfloridadisaster.org/
• Alabama: http://www.servealabama.gov/2010/default.aspx


FWS Contact Information:

A toll free number has been established to report oiled or injured wildlife. To report wildlife, call (866) 557.1401. Individuals are urged not to attempt to help injured or oiled animals, but to report any sightings to the toll free number.

If you're interested in volunteering to aid in the recovery effort, call (866) 448.5816.

Reporters with questions about FWS wildlife response should contact Tom MacKenzie at (678) 296.6400 or tom_mackenzie@fws.gov. For general media questions, reporters can call the general number at 985-902-5231 for information.

Citizens with claims related to damages caused by the spill should call (800) 440.0858 for more information about filing those claims.

Adirondack scientist helps with Gulf cleanup

Harrietstown, New York - June 30, 2010 • Video of Story



Michael Martin sits in his office at Cedar Eden Environmental on Route 86 in Harrietstown. He just returned from a two week mission to the Gulf of Mexico. Martin is freshwater scientist who was hired to help with the disaster down south.

"It really makes your heart sink when you see this oil out there just floating free," Martin said.

He worked 12-hour days with several other people, rescuing waterfowl from the water and nesting islands around Grand Isle, La., about 50 miles west of the gusher on the ocean floor.

"Most of the birds were alive; they were moderately soaked but could still fly. But they would tire very easily," Martin explained. "Once we identified them we would chase them and scoop them in a net and bring them to a triage center where they would receive immediate care and then shipped to another facility for long-term rehabilitation."

Martin and his crew rescued hundred of birds during the two week stay. He recalls one mission in particular.

"I think the biggest adventure was when we found this white pelican, it was unable to fly. It tried its darndest to fly; it got its wing out, paddles its feet, but it could never get in the air," he said.

While the trip to the save birds may have been exhausting, Martin says the efforts are worth it.

"If they remain out there, even if they are lightly to moderately oil soaked, they will eventually die, either from cleaning their feathers or eventually their inability to fly," he said.

Martin hopes to return to the Gulf of Mexico in the near future to assist with the disaster cleanup.

Source: Matt Henson, WCAX Channel 3 News

Oil Spill Projected across Wide Swath of Gulf Coast

Below is the 24 hour trajectory map for the Gulf Oil Spill, with landfall across most of the northern Gulf Coast. Click HERE for the trajectory map as a PDF file.