NOAA Research Vessel Sets Out To Gather Data On What Oil Spill Is Doing To Marine Life
This is good. This kind of information should be helpful in trying to figure out what to do next:
NEW ORLEANS — With mystery swirling over how much oil may be lurking beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a research vessel leaves Wednesday on a nine-day mission: To find and study a potentially toxic stew that oceanographers fear could be catastrophic for marine life.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Thomas Jefferson, one of the most technologically advanced vessels for finding hazards on the seafloor, has been diverted from a recent trip to map the ocean floor off Galveston, Texas, to the belching Deepwater Horizon oil leak.
Like most everything involved with the spill, there are more questions than answers. "The business of trying to detect submerged oil is not a settled science," Cmdr. Shepard Smith, the ship's commanding officer, said Tuesday during a tour of the ship for McClatchy. "There isn't a great body of experience with how to do this because it's a really very unusual circumstance."
The 208-foot, 36-person ship has been equipped with a variety of methods to detect oil. Smith said researchers have some idea how the sensors may react, he but added, "We don't know for sure, because we don't know the form it might take, and we've never done it before."
The ship and its researchers traditionally focus on changes to the seafloor that could present a threat to navigation — "usually we ignore what's in the water, we're more interested in the seafloor," Smith said. To help interpret the data, scientists from NOAA and other research facilities who specialize in studying ocean water and marine life have been brought aboard.
"It's totally new, we're really testing the feasibility of the approach, we don't know whether it will work or not, but it's certainly worth trying," said one of those researchers, Larry Mayer, the director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire. "What is the nature of submerged oil, if there is oil? We just don't understand its properties yet."
Some researchers have found what they say are vast plumes of oil suspended beneath the Gulf's surface, though BP has disputed those reports. Members of Congress and other researchers have been pressing the White House for weeks to do more to determine how much oil is suspended under the surface.
I hope it isn't too late to save natural treasures like this.
I am sure this venture will do wonders . Sheeeesh .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
The fish, plants, and marine ecosystem are getting f**ed up and dying. There I just saved the tax payers a lot of money.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
We got some folk who come on this site to denounce anyone in the military as deserving their fate...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.corpscpc.noaa.gov/procedures/pdf/S...
Well, it's only taken the Obama administration, what, 40 days or something to send out a research vessel to determine how bad the underwater plume is going to be?
Heckuva job, Obama.
... remember, the government was listening to the 'experts.' I mean, when you're caught ignoring safety procedures, it's not like you're going to lie about the cause or the extent of the damage, right?
/snark
is "Shepard Smith". Interesting. (strokes chin)
Be as you wish to seem
I believe this is day 44.
Ohh this is gonna be even more depressing
The big question is how big are the plumes and how dense.
Several scientists who studied the plumes claim way more oil has
been released than can be explained by the leak BP is trying to fix.
BP, predictably, claims the plumes don't exist.
But if they do exist, are as large and dense as claimed, where
is the oil coming from?
A fractured seabed where the seabed caved in on BP's drill 6 weeks
before the rig fire?
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
... that happened, they'll claim ignorance and accept responsibility ONLY for their half-assed operation.
A robot sweep of the area is in order.
Perhaps a rising stream of oil might be picked up on sonar or even radar.
Even a wider dispersed stream like closer to the top of the water column might get picked up.
First of all the path that the know leak takes needs to be
identified and quantified if possible.
If loose track of the rising oil column we know about,
we loose a lot of information.
How far can we track the trail of oil as it travels to the surface? Can the point of contact with the surface be determined.
From there I'd go looking for little pins on the surface in the specific area if and when the water gets calm and smooth.
A lot of people in float planes could spot a rising column...?
*
For what it's worth, instead of pumping MUD you could
pump tagged oil of the same consistency as the oil coming up
the well.
The tag could be somewhat like medical scanning radioactive type
so an organized sampling of the surface water for the tag
would reveal the dispersion pattern of that leak,
and even provide a time line.
hey, Bill Nye, and all comers, how does that sound?
Can we do that, and if we can, will it give us some of the info
we need to deal with the crisis?
There should be a way to track the oil leaks all the way
down from the surface, soaking up oil as you track...
An armada of robot subs with trackers in front and
"oil netters" in back.
Oil nets could have a large surface area and be maneuvered
with a robot team.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
What do you want to bet that BP will order the Coast Guard to turn the ship back. It's totally feasible, since the CG and local police are taking orders from BP.
Mike, sad but true. I don't know about local police, but the Coast Guard, in the form of Admiral Thad Allen, is still eating out of BP's hand. Admiral Allen still sounds like a BP spokesman. I'm surprised he doesn't end every sound-bite with "Bee Pee -- Beyond Petroleum".
This sounds like a great idea; but the devils always in the details....
The NOAA Administrator has been strangely taking the BP company line lately and reports are that the researchers are not allowed to share the data or publish results of findings.. is this true? The story was over @ Huff Post but what else is coming out? There are some strange signs of a cover up from various guvmint entities like the Coast Guard and NOAA lately...
And wtf is up with Admiral Thad Allen and BP Tony Heyward dining out together at a fancy restaurant in New Orleans? If they are colluding together aren't they smart enough to mind blowing their cover?
Yes, it's disgusting that Thad Allen is STILL acting like a BP spokesman. In his sound bites, when he's talking about what BP is doing, he stills says "we" most of the time. One would think that someone higher up would have cautioned him that at some point the Coast Guard may be testifying against BP, and that it would be a good idea not to make it sound like BP and the CG are one in the same.
And yes, it has sounded all along like NOAA was out to downplay the severity of the disaster, totally in concert with BP's lies. I have not yet seen anything that indicates otherwise. You'd better believe that science gets censored. I had hoped that would not be the case under this president as it was so shamelessly under the previous one.
are applauded. Government researchers actually trying to find out what is going on...part of a conspiracy.
"What is that stringy thing with a label holding up that bag of dried herbs around your neck, Daddy?"
"Folks, this is not your father's Republican Party."
Joe Biden
The video attached to this post is from the Ocean Circulation Group at the University of South Florida - the link should have been included in the post (if it was, apologies, I couldn't find it there).
HERE: http://ocgweb.marine.usf.edu/models.html
This site offers surface and sub-surface tracking models with wind, current data overlays and is highly informative.
Surprise, surprise... BP disputes reports that there are plumes of oil beneath the surface. Is that ridiculous or what? They want us to think that the ONLY BP oil there is from their gusher is what we see on the sub-sea TV camera that they DID NOT WANT the people to see... and the oil on the surface, that early on THEY KEPT NEWS CREWS FROM GETTING CLOSE ENOUGH TO SEE. Are we supposed to be stupid enough to believe that there's no BP oil between the surface and where it's gushing out of their well? Oh, I see... it just magically disappears - NOT. There HAVE to be vast blobs of oil throughout the depth of the Gulf.
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