GOMAEEN News Archive
These stories reflect Gulf news from June 2009 forward.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 | Shining in the Dark: Finding Some Good in the Tragedy of the Oil Spill When facing fear and tragedy we can make a plan. We can make a difference. Because what the poet and the star -- and this oil spill -- are asking of us, is to rise up to a certain height, to witness and keep watch, to shine in the dark. more info |
| Ocean research funding gap Yesterday was World Ocean Day, marking the beginning of Capitol Hill Oceans Week. The disaster spreading in the Gulf should be a wake up call for Washington. If we want to operate in the deep-sea and continue to rely on our precious marine resources, we need to better balance use with conservation and safety, and recommit to investment in undersea technology, science, and related education. more info |
| Well near Deepwater Horizon has leaked since at least April 30 While the leak is decidedly smaller than the Deepwater Horizon spill, a 10-mile-long slick emanating from the Ocean Saratoga is visible from space in multiple images gathered by Skytruth.org, which monitors environmental problems using satellites. more info |
| Underwater oil plumes confirmed in Gulf by scientists "There's always a risk with oil in the water and it depends on the species we're talking about and their life stages," Murawski said. "What we know is that eggs and larvae of animals are much more susceptible to even relatively low concentrations." more info |
| Is it possible to make lemonade out the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? He suggests we make lemonade out of BP oil by using BP money, taxes and other economic incentives to turn this place we love so much into an "international campus for oil spill prevention, cleanup and recovery." more info |
| Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, Federal Management Witnesses testified about the circumstances surrounding the ongoing spill of crude oil from the well site in the Gulf of Mexico. Federal officials and others talked about the federal response to the oil spill, the scope of the environmental threat, regulatory oversight issues, and continuing efforts to investigate the causes and threat. Start Video at 4:20 to hear Sylvia Earle's talk. more info |
| National Seafood Impact from Gulf Oil Fisherman in the Gulf are scrabbling to harvest before oil reaches further, effecting delicate wetlands and bays where oysters and shrimp are nestled. more info |
| UA scientists get grant for oil cleanup research Two University of Alabama scientists will use a federal grant to conduct research into using organic materials to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. more info |
| Gulf oil spill threatens sargassum, a vital floating habitat The same forces that push sargassum patches around in the Gulf are now pushing oil slicks and emulsified goop the consistency of Hershey's syrup. It is inevitable that the two will meet. When they do, scientists say, the sargassum will die. more info |
| Twelve (Imperfect) Ways to Clean the Gulf The chart below summarizes the various cleanup efforts being undertaken or proposed in the gulf and along the coast. more info |
| Coast Guard: Gulf oil spill response growing more complex Speaking from the White House, Allen said that response teams are no longer battling one monolithic spill but ``hundreds of thousands of patches of oil going in lots of different directions.'' more info |
| Gulf Wildlife Rescue Efforts Only Just Beginning "This really is the tip of the iceberg. They don't know how many animals will be affected," said Bell. "When they get the animals clean and they're rehabilitated and go back into wild, now the question is, where do you release them? If you put them back out here, they can come right back in covered with oil." more info |
| New oil plume evidence uncovered The University of South Florida recently discovered a second oil plume in the northeastern Gulf. The first plume was found by Mississippi universities in early May. more info |
| Coast Guard investigates 'oily substance' reports in Florida Keys as models show loop current taking spill to East Coast Meanwhile, computer models today showed that oil from the damaged Gulf well could wind up on the East Coast and even get carried on currents across the Atlantic Ocean toward Europe. more info |
| Gulf oil spill: Pilot fencing set in Ocean Springs A shield of hydrophilic oil absorbing fabric was placed at the beach outfall at the foot of Washington Avenue and Front Beach Road Wednesday as marshland protection against the Gulf oil spill. more info |
| Oil Spill Answers from Bird Conservation Expert on the Ground That human instinct to rush in to rescue can put more pressure on areas and birds and well-intentioned efforts can cause harm, so we’re trying to help direct volunteers so that their impact is beneficial. more info |
| Consolidated Fish and Wildlife Collection Report: Wildlife Impacted By Spill June 3rd PDF-These are the consolidated numbers of collected fish and wildlife that have been reported to the Unified Area Command from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), incident area commands, rehabilitation centers and other authorized sources operating within the Deepwater Horizon/BP incident impact area. more info |
| Dauphin Island battles with oil spill "The governor had a real aggressive plan. That material was not available in that quantity so we could do that. Now we have to go back and boom off every nook and cranny which is a detailed and time consuming situation," said Collier. more info |
| Oil Spill Wildlife Spotlight: Sperm Whales Deepwater Horizon oil has killed birds along a 100-mile stretch of Louisiana coast and led to fisheries closures near Florida but there is an endangered species known to feed in the murky depths right where oil is leaking: sperm whales. A 2004 count estimated there were 1,665 sperm whales in the northern Gulf of Mexico. They are slightly smaller than typical sperm whales and have a distinct dialect. Overall, very little is known about the population. With oil still spewing, they may be at risk. more info |
| From Kigali to Haiti - People around the planet gear up for World Environment Day From Hollywood stars to schoolchildren, millions of people on every continent will take action for the planet on 5 June for World Environment Day. Under the theme 'Many Species. One Planet. One Future', this year’s event will celebrate the incredible diversity of life on Earth as part of the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity. more info |
| View from the Gulf: The Dangers of Hidden Oil A supply vessel passes through the oil slick near the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico Jae C. Hong / AP CommentPrintEmailDigg FacebookTwitterMORE Add to my:del.icio.usTechnoratiredditGoogle BookmarksMixxStumbleUponBlog this on:TypePadLiveJournalBloggerMySpace.. 0 diggs digg Think of an oil spill and you picture a black tide engulfing beaches and drowning shorebirds and sea turtles in crude. These are the images of the Exxon Valdez accident, which spilled nearly 11 million gal. of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989. The oil that escaped from the tanker eventually coated 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of pristine Alaskan coastline and covered 11,000 sq. mi. (28,000 sq km) of ocean in an inky slick. The Valdez disaster was the biggest spill in American history — until now. Since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and triggered an underwater well blowout, at least 20 million bbl. of crude — and counting — have poured into the Gulf of Mexico. And, yet, where is all the oil? (See the 50 worst inventions of all time.) On Sunday, I took a boat trip from the fishing port of Venice in the southeastern reaches of Louisiana, where the road ends and the marshlands begin. Traveling with Angelina Freeman, a coast scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), we saw no Valdez-style wave of crude drenching the bayou. We did see some oil ringing the tall wetland grasses near Pass a Loutre, La., by the mouth of the Mississippi River — the grasses looked as if they had been dipped in chocolate. I could smell the tang of hydrocarbons. But if this is really the "oilpocalypse," as some observers have dubbed the Deepwater catastrophe, it is not apparent on the surface. That is what makes the Gulf of Mexico spill so much more insidious than that of the Valdez in Alaska, and potentially much more destructive. The oil leaking from the broken well at the bottom of the ocean is everywhere — but nowhere you can see. While a tanker spills the entirety of its contents on the surface of the ocean at once, creating an avalanche of crude — and immediate and horrific photographic images — the Gulf spill gushes continuously, out of sight, from 5,000 ft. (1,500 m) below the ocean's surface. The busted well is a fountain that the Obama Administration recently admitted could flow uninterrupted until August. Think of it less as an acute trauma than a chronic, progressive disease that doctors can diagnose but cannot cure. (Watch the video "Portraits from the Oil Spill.") So where is the oil hiding? Scientists say some of it is spreading underwater, in plumes that extend thousands of feet below the surface. But BP CEO Tony Hayward disputes those claims. "The oil is on the surface," Hayward said on Sunday while touring a staging area for cleanup workers in Louisiana. He said there was "no evidence" that enormous reservoirs of oil were suspended undersea. (Comment on this story.) However, two independent university research teams — from the University of South Florida and the University of Georgia (UGA) — have reported direct evidence of underwater oil. Samantha Joye, a marine scientist at UGA, has been aboard the university's ongoing research voyage in the Gulf and blogging from the ship; she reported on Monday that the team could see oil in water samples collected from plumes nearly 1,000 ft. (300 m) below the surface. "Seeing is believing," she blogged, and after nearly a month of continual obfuscation by BP on the technical details of the spill, Joye's words carry a lot more weight than Hayward's. But seeing is exactly what will be hard to do with the Gulf spill, now and in the months ahead. The oil underwater will do untold amounts of damage, even if it's invisible. "It's out of sight and out of mind, but it will have a huge effect on the marine life that oscillates in that zone," says Doug Rader, the chief ocean scientist for the EDF. more info |
| Gulf Oil Spill: New Plumes EXPOSED In Video ABC News has new video showing oil plumes 40 miles out in the ocean, just southwest of the Deepwater Horizon. So far, three large underwater islands of oil have been discovered, some 20 miles long by 6 miles wide. The new found plumes will surely increase the outrage against BP as the company tries for the seventh time to stop the leaking oil. more info |
| Environmental, Economic Costs of Gulf Oil Spill The flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico continues unabated, after the failure of BP's latest attempt to cap the blown-out well. more info |
| Hello, Hurricane Season I suppose it’s normal to feel slight angst at the beginning of hurricane season because it can go either way: It can be a mild year, or it can be one that produces 10 to 20 named storms, according to Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. There’s just no way of knowing what will happen. more info |
| Oil Nears Florida as Effort to Contain Well Hits Snag The oil sheen appeared to be a small breakaway piece from a larger sheen measuring 50 feet by 20 feet that was still 46 miles off the coast of Pensacola on Tuesday afternoon, according to a spokeswoman at the unified command center in Mobile, Ala., that is tracking the spill. more info |
| Oil effects on marsh grass -informative video In this 10-min video, Dr Irv Mendelssohn, Louisiana State University School of the Coast and Environment, describes oil impacts on salt marshes. He describes factors that determine whether the marsh will die and factors to consider when deciding what action, if any, should be taken to decontaminate marshes. This is a must see for anyone who would like to know how to respond when asked what the oil spill will do to the marsh. more info |
| Oil 'Everywhere' On Alabama Beach John Zarrella is first on the beach in the early morning in Dauphin Island, Alabama, showing the blobs of oil that are washing up all along the shoreline. more info |
| Fears grow over oil spill's long-term effects on food chain As oil continues gushing from the ocean floor into the Gulf of Mexico, with no sign of stopping until a new well is finished this August, scientists, environmentalists and local residents are beginning to reckon with the reality of a massive annihilation of sea creatures and wildlife. more info |
| Obama orders more manpower to spill cleanup President Obama said Tuesday that he has directed federal authorities to triple manpower in the Gulf of Mexico in places where oil from a ruptured underwater pipe has hit shore or is close to impact. more info |
| Obama heads to Gulf Coast a second time as oil spill's impact grows Allen said on ABC's "Good Morning America" program: "They have been able to stop the hydrocarbons from coming up the well bore. I think the real challenge today is going to be to sustain the mud on top of the hydrocarbons and reduce the pressure to the point where they could actually put a cement plug in." He added: "We're very encouraged by the fact that they were able to push the mud down. The real question is can we sustain it. And that will be the critical issue going through the next 12 to 18 hours." more info |
