The information could help efforts to contain the effects of the disaster and, in the longer term, "ensure we have the best underlying science to guide our response to the next spill", says Ira Leifer, a chemical engineer at the Marine Sciences Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "And it is a foregone conclusion that there will be other significant oil spills."Â
The US government and energy company BP — which owns the well and carries the liability for the spill — have already drawn criticism for the lack of a credible estimate of how much oil is spewing into waters less than 70 kilometres from the Louisiana coast. Now, researchers are expressing concerns over the limited science being done in and around affected areas.
The lead agency for spill-related scientific issues, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is responsible for advising BP and the US Coast Guard, which is directing the federal response, and for assessing the effects of the spill. Much of NOAA's work has focused on gathering data about the floating oil slick to feed into models that predict how it will spread. That task is becoming increasingly urgent as oil enters the Loop Current, a forerunner of the Gulf Stream that could carry the oil to Florida and the Atlantic Ocean. Doug Helton, NOAA's incident operations coordinator in the Emergency Response Division, says that nearly all of his 110 employees are focused on spill work and retired staff members have even been called in to help. Read the full report here.
Source: Mark Schrope for Nature News
