Check out this stunningly, beautiful recap of where we are now and the questions still remaining. This video, featured by onEarth Magazine, was concocted by the one and only Perrin Ireland (@experrinment). Having seen Perrin create exquisite works of science art live, I speak from experience when I say she is nothing short of spectacular.

The post Day 1,825 first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The authors used chemical analysis to look for signatures of DWH oil, while simultaneously counting and identifying species of meiofauna (microscopic animals such as nematode worms, copepod crustaceans, etc.) and macrofauna (slightly larger, but still small animals such as polychaete worms). In this way, the presence of oil compounds could be compared with the number of deep-sea species present and the abundance of different organisms.

Aaaand, there’s no questioning these results. Here’s a map of sample sites, where color indicates impact (red = highest impact, with a high chemical signature of oil, low species diversity, and high nematode:copepod ratios, which is a biological indicator of oil pollution):

Now we zoom in and focus on the area surrounding the wellhead:

Since you can’t sample everywhere in the deep-sea, the authors also used their dataset to model the predicted benthic footprint over a wider area. Remember, red is bad:

And again, zooming into the area directly around the wellhead. Shazaam:

In addition to confirming the impact around the wellhead, this modeling approach picks up on shallow water impacts (orange patches off Louisiana, likely driven by surface transport of oil slicks), as well as a predicted area of moderate impact extending 17km to the southwest of the wellhead (remember that deepwater oil plume? Yeah, it seems to have affected animals living in the mud below it).

Note that the red “severely impacted” deep-sea area is 24.4 square kilometers, and the moderately impacted yellow area is 148 sq km (in total, that’s more than TWO Manhattans impacted by oil. Imagine New York City covered in sticky crude twice over…).

When you think about the size of the deep-sea impact, the road to recovery also seems quite grim. We’re talking possibly decades to return to business as normal:

Full recovery at impacted stations will require degradation or burial of DWH-derived contaminants in combination with naturally slow successional processes….Recovery of soft-bottom benthos after previous shallow-water oil spills has been documented to take years to decades [39,40]. In the deep-sea, temperature is uniformly around 4°C, and TOC [total organic carbon] and nutrient concentrations are low, so it is likely that [oil] hydrocarbons in sediments will degrade more slowly than in the water column or at the surface. Also, metabolic rates of benthos in the deep-sea are very slow and turnover times are very long [41,42]. Given deep- sea conditions, it is possible that recovery of deep-sea soft-bottom habitat and the associated communities in the vicinity of the DWH blowout will take decades or longer.

Reference:

Montagna PA, Baguley JG, Cooksey C, Hartwell I, Hyde LJ, Hyland JL, et al. (2013) Deep-Sea Benthic Footprint of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout. PLoS ONE, 8(8):e70540.

The post The Deep-sea footprint of Deepwater Horizon first appeared on Deep Sea News.

In September an oil sheen about four miles long had appeared in the Gulf of Mexico near the Deep Water Horizon well site.  The sheen was originally spotted on a satellite image from BP.  That oil from the sheen matches the oil from Deep Water Horizon site.

On December 15, remotely operated vehicles were sent to the Deepwater Horizon wreckage and the surrounding area.

“No apparent source of the surface sheen has been discovered by this effort,” said Capt. Duke Walker, Federal On-Scene Coordinator for Deepwater Horizon. “Next steps are being considered as we await the lab results of the surface and subsurface samples and more detailed analysis of the video shot during the mission.”

But of unfortunately, “The sheen is not feasible to recover” said Walker, but “does not pose a risk to the shoreline” Shoreline? What about the open ocean ecosystem?

Video of the ROV inspections can be found at the following links:

Well Heads

http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=1861633

Wreckage

http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=1861630

Riser Pipe

http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=1861396

Containment Dome

http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=1861393

The post Mystery Sheen Near Deep Water Horizon Site first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Past studies investigating effects of oil spills on salt marshes indicate that negative impacts on plants can be overcome by vegetation regrowth into disturbed areas once the oil has been degraded (8, 28–30). This finding suggests that marshes are intrinsically resilient to (i.e., able to recover from) oil-induced perturbation, especially in warmer climates such as the Gulf of Mexico, where oil degradation and plant growth rates may be high. (Silliman et al. 2012)

The finding’s aren’t surprising. Oil killed stuff. But even after 2 years, there’s been more speculation than published research and I think its important to highlight ongoing efforts to characterize the exact ways in which oil wreaked havoc on the Gulf ecosystem.

These data provide evidence of salt-marsh community die-off in the near-shore portion of the Louisiana shoreline after the BP-DWH oil spill because of high concentrations of oil at the edge of the marsh. Specifically, these findings suggest that the veg- etation at the marsh edge, by reaching above the highest high- tide line in the microtidal environment of the Gulf of Mexico, blocked and confined incoming oil to the shoreline region of the marsh. This shoreline containment of the oil may have protected inland marsh but led to extensive mortality of marsh plants lo- cated from the marsh edge to 5–10 m inland and to sublethal plant impacts on plants 10–20 m from the shoreline, where plant oiling was less severe….These data also suggest that the mechanism of the lethal effects of oil are more likely derived from interference with respiration and photosynthesis than from direct toxicity because plant death only occurred at high levels of oil coverage. (Silliman et al. 2012)

Silliman et al. found that this oil-induced plan death effectively speed up the rate of erosion in Louisiana marsh ecosystems. Oiled sites eroded twice as fast as reference (non-oiled) sites, for a full year (October 2010-October 2011) before leveling back off again.

Our results suggest that there are reasons for both optimism and concern about the impact of this oil spill on Mississippi deltaic marshes of Louisiana. On one hand, our results reveal that marsh vegetation displays remarkable resilience to oil spills by concentrating and confining the effects of oil to the marsh edge, recovering fully in noneroded areas after ∼1.5 y, and suppressing, through this recolonization, further accelerated erosion rates along the shoreline. The lack of oil on the marsh surface or on grasses at distances greater than 15 m from the shoreline at any site (Fig. 1A) suggests that incoming oil sheens were contained and prevented from moving into interior marshes by a baffling wall of live and dying salt-marsh grasses, a process that in itself increases the resistance of the extensive marsh ecosystem to oil spill. However, this resistance comes at a high cost for the impacted areas because marsh grass die-off and subsequent sediment exposure to waves resulted in a more than doubling of the rate of erosion of the intertidal platform, leading to permanent marsh ecosystem loss. (Silliman et al. 2012)

Louisiana’s salt marshes play a critical ecological roles, acting as storm buffers and breeding grounds that underpin the entire Gulf seafood industry. But they have been in trouble for a looooong time. The BP oil spill added extra stress to these already-stressed ecosystems–yet another anthropogenic impact promoting further ecosystem decline.

Reference

Silliman BR, van de Koppel J, McCoy MW, Diller J, Kasozi GN, Earl K, et al. Degradation and resilience in Louisiana salt marshes after the BP-Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2012 Jun. 25.

The post Gulf oil spill suffocated marsh grasses, enhanced erosion first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Late last week, we reluctantly handed over more than 3,000 confidential e-mails to BP, as part of a subpoena from the oil company demanding access to them because of the Deepwater Horizon disaster lawsuit brought by the US government. We are accused of no crimes, nor are we party to the lawsuit. We are two scientists at an academic research institution who responded to requests for help from BP and government officials at a time of crisis.

Reddy and Camilli’s most impassioned argument noted that public perception of the scientific process, and thus the integrity of scientists themselves could be fundamentally questioned as BP tries to wiggle its way out of paying massive fines:

BP claimed that it needed to better understand our findings because billions of dollars in fines are potentially at stake. So we produced more than 50,000 pages of documents, raw data, reports, and algorithms used in our research — everything BP would need to analyze and confirm our findings. But BP still demanded access to our private communications. Our concern is not simply invasion of privacy, but the erosion of the scientific deliberative process.

Deliberation is an integral part of the scientific method that has existed for more than 2,000 years; e-mail is the 21st century medium by which these deliberations now often occur. During this process, researchers challenge each other and hone ideas. In reviewing our private documents, BP will probably find e-mail correspondence showing that during the course of our analysis, we hit dead-ends; that we remained skeptical and pushed one another to analyze data from various perspectives; that we discovered weaknesses in our methods (if only to find ways to make them stronger); or that we modified our course, especially when we received new information that provided additional insight and caused us to re-examine hypotheses and methods.

In these candid discussions among researchers, constructive criticism and devil’s advocacy are welcomed. Such interchange does not cast doubt on the strengths of our conclusions; rather, it constitutes the typically unvarnished, yet rigorous, deliberative process by which scientists test and refine their conclusions to reduce uncertainty and increase accuracy. To ensure the research’s quality, scientific peers conduct an independent and comprehensive review of the work before it is published.

Here at DSN we’re all very concerned. Personally, I would be abhorred at such an invasion of privacy–especially in a scenario where I offered help pro bono in the face of a disaster, like many scientists did during the BP spill.

But some parties seem less concerned. Wired news summed up the different arguments:

Reaction to these fears has been mixed. Marine biologists Kevin Zelnio and Miriam Goldstein of Deep Sea News both tweeted their concerns, with Goldstein worrying about the precedent and Zelnio wondering if BP will “treat oceanographers as dishonestly as climate denialists treated researchers.”

Science policy expert Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado was more sanguine, writing on his blogthat publicly supported scientists should expect to share their full deliberations. “Besides, good science, even when messy, does not need to be hidden from view,” wrote Pielke.

Attorney David Pettit of the Natural Resources Defense Council also said that concerns may be overblown, though he preferred to talk about the legal dynamics shaping BP’s request.

Whereas federal law has established special protections for attorney-client privileges, doctor-patient confidentiality and journalists shielding their sources, there are no protections for academic scientists. Requests like BP’s are considered on a case-by-case basis.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if an academic institution went to the Supreme Court and said we need another exemption for academic research,” Pettit said.

Regardless, we need more legal protection for researchers. Reddy and Camilli’s home institution, WHOI, issued a parallel statement laying out some of the legal concerns spurred by the email subpoenas:

This case raises issues that go far beyond our institution and BP. Despite earlier Supreme Court recognition of the importance of the deliberative scientific process, there remains inadequate legislation and legal precedent to shield researchers and institutions who are not parties to litigation from having to surrender pre-publication materials, including deliberative emails and notes, manuscript drafts, reviewers’ comments, and other private correspondence. This situation leaves scientists and institutions vulnerable to litigants who could disregard context and use the material inappropriately and inaccurately in an effort to discredit their work. In addition, there is no guarantee that the costs, both time and material, incurred by an institution in response to court-mandated requests will be reimbursed by the litigants.

The materials that BP demanded may include intellectual property, hard won by the researchers. While there are protections that can be placed by the court and through confidentiality orders, experts in the litigant parties receiving these materials may obtain insight into the creation of this intellectual property and be able to replicate it for their own programs even if they do not directly take it. It is unlikely that institutions such as WHOI would be able to identify or prosecute this infringement of intellectual property rights.

This can of worms has just been opened, so lets keep the dialogue open–lest it be forgotten like the oil still festering in the deep.

The post BP’s email subpoenas threaten to erode the scientific deliberative process first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Last Friday was the 2 year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The ramifications of the vast amount of oil and dispersant polluting the Gulf are still becoming clear, but the problem hasn’t gone away, nor is it likely to.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune rounded up official statements from politicians, scientists, and environmental groups.

Al Jazeera reports on deformities in Gulf seafood:

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP’s 2010 oil disaster.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp – and interviewees’ fingers point towards BP’s oil pollution disaster as being the cause.

The New York Times ran an angry editorial:

What is missing is the accountability that comes from real consequences: a criminal prosecution that holds responsible the individuals who gambled with the lives of BP’s contractors and the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico. Only such an outcome can rebuild trust in an oil industry that asks for the public’s faith so that it can drill more along the nation’s coastlines. And perhaps only such an outcome can keep BP in line and can keep an accident like the Deepwater Horizon disaster from happening again.

E&E Publishing has a laudatory profile of NOAA head Jane Lubcenco and USGS chief Marcia McNutt:

Throughout the spill, the two women played an inside-out game.

Lubchenco was one of the government’s most public faces. She walked Florida, and the world, through the vagaries of the Loop Current. She closed swaths of the ocean to fishing. She confirmed — too slowly for the public’s liking — the existence of deepwater oil. And she led the assessment, still ongoing, of the oil’s long-term damage to the Gulf.

Meanwhile, McNutt was sequestered at BP PLC headquarters in Houston. A three-day stay had migrated into a months-long sojourn. She led assessments of the amount of oil flowing into the ocean. She convened a secretive team of researchers who helped dictate the government’s long-term strategy. And when the time came to seal the well, McNutt helped broker a peace between BP’s engineers and outside scientists.

[UPDATE 09:30 PDT]: Hannah Waters at the Smithsonian has a short post and a slideshow showing what wildlife has recovered, and what will be damaged for many years to come.

Only one thing is certain: that scientists need more time to fully understand the impacts of the oil spill. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about how this spill altered the food web of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem,” says Samantha Joye, who studies marine chemistry and microbes at the University of Georgia. “We’re trying to understand very complicated interactions and feedbacks in a dynamic, constantly-changing system, and it’s going to take time.”

Please post your own links in the comments.

H/T to @oceansresearch for some of the links.

The post BP oil spill 2-year anniversary: link roundup first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Some poor intern at Marine Science Review is probably wailing in the hospital, clenching his eye sockets in pain after trawling Google Scholar for 3 days straight. The science division at Sea Web have put together what looks to be the definitive list of recent oil spill literature (accessible here), covering impacts from Deepwater Horizon, knowledge previous spills, and the effects of dispersants. Thankfully, many of these publications are Open Access.

For anyone interested in the scientific literature, this sh*t is a gold mine (comprehensive lists of oil spill articles are very hard to find), and this e-mail was too good to keep hidden in my inbox. I’ll be reading through this list myself, summarizing our current state of knowledge in a future post – stay tuned!

The post Holy Link Fest, Batman! My cup runneth over with oil spill literature first appeared on Deep Sea News.

WTF I hear you wanna be called Beyond Petroleum, now? Do you think you’re some kind of rap star or something?? Haha! Whatevs, let’s just go by our ole grade school nickname for you, BP.

I know its been a while since I last wrote. It’s not like I was neglecting you or anythang… but you know how it is bro, stuff comes up and we was all like into some other things here and there. But I’ve been keeping track of you, ya know, on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the news… Its cool, I know you’ve been busy too. Happens.

Anyways, just wanted to congratulate you on getting the government to let you hang a new deep water oil rig out in the Gulf of Mex. Must feel good to put the past behind you and move on. Man do we know all about that!! amirite or amirite bro?? So many crazy nights back in the day LOLOLOL! Glad its all behind us now.

I mean, only like 11 people died. Big deal, right? I mean more people have died from BP executives DUI’ing it up after a weekend of binge drinking their government subsidized monthly bonuses away. Man that was crazy shit! Do you still have Juliana’s number?? Cause I wrote it on my hand but spilled some of that Perrier-Jouet we was getting hammered on all over myself and it must have rubbed off. Help a brotha out, bro.

Anyways, you’ve earned it. Paid your dues. Done your time. Oh wait, no one was actually jailed for the manslaughter, EPA infringements, regulatory breaches and criminal neglect right? I guess its still an ongoing investigation, but I bet your boys are working ’em deep, amirite? *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*

I mean, how else did you get this great deal? As NRDC Senior Attorney David Pettit calls it a “$100 billion gamble”. For real though bro, let’s get it all cashed out in Sacagawea dollar coins and fill up an indoor swimming pool so we can do backstrokes Scrooge McDuck style!

Anyhow, glad to see ya back out in the ocean and as you say, “another milestone in our steady return to safely drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.” Cause seriously, dude, what’s safer than unsuccessfully drilling down in over 5000 feet of water? How about 6,034 feet of water! Amirite bro?? Piece of cake and that 3 billion barrels of hot, steamy crude will be so totez worth it. Those dolphins and sea turtles are just D-U-M-B! Why can’t they just swim around it? I mean, really, they got eyes and stuff. “Hey dolphin, look there’s a giant glob of oil, why not swim around it, duh.”

Oh and those poor people in the south probably had cancer from smoking and eating copious amount fry grease. Trying to blame sudden mysterious health problems on you is like super lame. Whatevs bro, I got your back.

Keep it real on the east side fool. Peace out, Kevvy Z

p.s. – Delta Tau Chi 4 life bro!!!!

The post Open Letter to My Bros at British Petroleum first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Story at NPR:

A breakthrough in oil cleanup technology allows crews to skim spilled oil off the water’s surface at a much faster rate. The new device wasn’t developed by Exxon, BP or any of the major oil companies — it’s the work of Elastec/American Marine, based in Illinois. And the design won the company a rich award from the X Prize Foundation.

Oil is attracted to plastic. And water is not. That, in essence, is the basis of Elastec’s new skimmer.

It’s huge, about the size of a large U-Haul truck. And it looks something like a giant abacus. It has 64 grooved plastic discs, arranged in rows, with a scraper along the top.

“That’s the elegance of this machine. It sounds like it’s just so basic, but it picks the oil off, puts it in a trough and we pump it away, and that’s all there is to it,” says Team Elastec project manager Don Johnson. “And it does it at a nearly 90 percent efficiency rate.” (click link above for the full scoop and audio)

The post New Oil Skimmer Design Wins X-Prize first appeared on Deep Sea News.

But Congress has to decide how that money gets spent – and thankfully, the House and Senate are trying to move quickly to pass the bill. The fine money is tentatively set to be divided amongst five areas:

• 35 percent would be divided equally among the five Gulf states for economic and ecological recovery activities along the coast.
• 30 percent would be dedicated to the development and implementation of a comprehensive restoration plan. A new Gulf Coast Restoration Council — made up of representatives from all five states — would dictate the scope of that plan.
• 30 percent would be disbursed by the council to Gulf Coast states, with the allocation dictated in part by spill impact.
• 5 percent would go to a new long-term science and fisheries endowment and to a Gulf Coast research, science and technology program.

The post Divvying up BP’s fine for restoration in the Gulf first appeared on Deep Sea News.