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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (569568)	6/1/2010 9:04:05 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575615

NOAA research ship to search Gulf for underwater oil By LESLEY CLARK McClatchy Newspapers 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 Newspapers. "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, but he 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, owner of the leaking well, 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. Smith said, diplomatically: "We're hoping to contribute to that discussion." Oceanographers think the dispersants used to break up the surface oil have been pushing much of it below the surface. They've been agitating for underwater sampling, said Doug Rader, the chief oceans scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund. "I certainly am relieved that NOAA and independent scientists are now working together to get to the bottom of the mystery of the midwater oil, because it's such a potential threat to an extremely important marine element and the risk has been underappreciated," Rader said from Raleigh, N.C. "Characterizing that threat is extremely important." The area under the water, he said, is a "main food pathway" for the oceans and "fuels a tremendous profusion of life." The Thomas Jefferson won't map the full extent of underwater oil by itself, Smith said. "We'll be looking at a piece of the puzzle; other research ships will be looking at other parts," he said, "But taken together, all of these observations can help the scientific community understand and estimate the nature and extent of any subsurface oil." Read more: miamiherald.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (569568)	6/1/2010 9:07:03 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1575615

I hope not. I think the biggest thing that would affect the fishing industry is if heavy concentrations of surface oil washed up into wetlands that are important to the oyster and shrimp fishing industries. I think thats most likely to happen along the coast of LA. Thats what has Jindal exercised and talking about sand berms. I don't know how long affected areas would take to recover. Personally I consider dispersion of the oil as the best thing that can be done next to recovery and removal. There are people using overblown language about the GOM overall. Its a big area of water and this spill isn't going to affect most of the Gulf imo. Thats no comfort to a LA shrimper who can't work though. I know the damage at least to some of the marshes and some species of birds will be long term.....years before they recover. It takes a while for plant life to recover from oil seepage in the dirt. I hope marine life will fare better.