A picture of the Gulf from above really can be worth those 1000 words

The truism about pictures versus words is amply illustrated by SkyTruth’s running blog, which provides ongoing wide-angle illustrations of the Gulf Oil Spill. Founded in 2001 by John Amos, a geologist experienced in satellite image processing, image analysis, and digital mapping techniques, SkyTruth (http://www.skytruth.org/index.htm) is now a small non-profit organization interested in applying that technology to environmental issues. Its goal is to shine a bright, and visual, light on the state of the earth. SkyTruth started a blog in 2007 (http://blog.skytruth.org/), but was the effort was relatively sleepy; posts averaged less than 2 per month, on mostly random subjects but occasionally including notes about oil leaks from offshore platforms.

As it happens, Mr. Amos provided expert testimony to the U.S. Senate’s United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in November 2009, focusing on the risks of offshore drilling illustrated by a blowout at a platform off the coast of Australia in 2008 covered 22,000 square miles of ocean with oil in a 10 week stretch. His street cred on the topic was therefore well established by the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew. The day after the explosion, SkyTruth’s blog, usually written by Mr. Amos, started writing and posting dramatic pictures of the resulting fire and oil plumes. In contrast to its earlier slow pace, it has kept up nearly daily postings ever since. The content combines summaries of the day’s events and running commentary (often critical) with excellent photos, various technical analyses of numerical estimates, quantitative comparisons, satellite images, videos, and radar images illustrating the movement of oil and impacts throughout the Gulf region. The images are usually heavily annotated to point out landmarks and patterns, which is usually helpful but occasionally distracting (and hard to evaluate for accuracy), and the text comes with a heavy helping of disdain for just about anyone involved in the response.

Nonetheless, SkyTruth has been credited with being at the forefront of those questioning, and eventually disproving, the low-ball official estimates of the volume of oil gushing out of the ocean floor. Also a worthwhile resource, in mid-May SkyTruth joined with the Ocean Conservancy and the Surfrider Foundation to host an interesting interactive and comprehensive web site, the Gulf Oil Spill Tracker (http://oilspill.skytruth.org/main), as a repository of reports from the public about oil sightings and locations.

The Thrill of Scientific Victory in the Middle of a Defeated Gulf

Marshalling the resources for scientific studies of an event like the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, which blew up on April 20, 2010, is usually daunting and time consuming. A credible effort requires, at a minimum, expert personpower, equipment, supplies, and buckets of money. But the unprecedented draw of such a unique opportunity got a fast response from the of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Lab. By the end of April, the University assembled a team drawn from experts across its many departments involved in ocean, marine life, and geophysical studies, got funding from NOAA, and put the Research Vessel Pelican on the water to take sediment samples and begin measuring the movement and physical state of the released oil. Dr. Vernon Asper, a professor in the Department of Marine Science at USM and trained marine geology at the University of Hawaii and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, became the voyage’s designated blogger.

That cruise lasted 10 days, and Dr. Asper returned to sea on a second week-long trip at the end of May on the R/V Tommy Munro sponsored by NSF and included a consortium of scientists, notably Dr. Samantha Joye (arguably, the most well-known of those scientists blogging about the oil spill; see http://gulfblog.uga.edu/). Dr. Asper’s observations of the scene at this “Ground Zero,” descriptions of the work, and comments on the results make for a great read. He provides readable if somewhat technical descriptions of the equipment used and the sampling strategies, along with capturing a bit of the flavor of the voyage itself and the people involved. Embedded along with the blog text are great pictures, a video, and a series of audio blog posts from his colleague, Dr. Jim Franks, a researcher in the Department of Fisheries Research and Development.

But what really makes this blog stand out is its sense of gee-whiz excitement about the thrills of being in the middle of real-time scientific discoveries. Many of the samples and data collected will be analyzed back on dry land for years. But in the blog, Dr. Asper’s informal but engaging writing poses the scientific questions being asked right now, captures first reactions to the data, spits out hypotheses, and tosses around options to test the hypotheses. Ultimately, he describes not one but two Eureka moments (“One of the best days in my science career ever”), realizing that their early ideas about the oil forming deep underwater plumes, and the nature of the aggregates that form the plumes, are the right interpretations and real discoveries (which BP dismissed, until public release of some data forced them to concede the points). Along the line, he also enjoys interviews with Katie Couric, a Good Morning America team, and New York Times reporters. The only down side is that the blog does not have options for comments or display of hits received, so it’s not possible to gauge the level of interest it has received. And the entries end on June 1, with the return of the R/V Tommy Munro to port, with no further updates as of June 25. It’s well worth looking for future installments. Check it out at http://www.usm.edu/oilspill/blogs.php.

Deep Sea News Conveys Deep Sadness

Deep Sea News-I hit marine science blog pay dirt! http://deepseanews.com/
Thanks to Southern Fried Scientists, a trio of graduate students who have aggregated an outstanding list of credible oil spill blogs and twitter sites found at http://www.southernfriedscience.com/ I found Deep Sea News.

Hosted by Craig McClain National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, the blog is a finalist in the "Funniest Blog" category for the 2010 Research Blogging Awards given by Seed Media Group. But these awards were made in February before the spill. I doubt that Deep Sea News would be entered in the same category next year.

McClain, or Dr. M as he is identified, launched his blog with the intent to post abstracts of recently published papers. But as he began to add more news, Dr. M realized that his blog could be a channel to deliver deep-sea science to the public. Today’s post offers a link to Scientific American’s story on the “mass murder” (blogger’s characterization) of sea cucumbers near the oil leak site. There are two photos, one aerial in which you can see an expanse of water dotted with floaters and another close up of the sea cucumber. Thousands of these sea-bottom feeding creatures died and floated to the surface of the Gulf. The team of researchers who reported this huge fish kill was actually in the Gulf to measure methane levels, estimate the size of the spill and come up with ways to remove the methane from the water. The Deep Sea News blog cited this story as another of the “ecological disaster manifesting itself.”

The next post for June 22, proclaims that is has been “64 magical days and 160 million gallons (or so) since the Deepwater Horizon smack down,” and then follows with a long list of links to the most arresting stories to “make you feel nauseous.” Reading these recent posts written by scientists who know all too well what is being lost, you are exposed to their feelings as well as their knowledge. They don’t need to express their feelings in sensational terms, the facts they choose to highlight and explain along with random sarcasm convey their discouragement.

Samantha Joye and gulfblog: cataloging disaster

According to WNEG’s website, a scientific team funded by the National Science Foundation set sail on May 25, 2010 for a two-week survey of the damage from the continuing Deepwater oil spill. The team comprises scientists from University of Southern Mississippi, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and University of California, Santa Barbara, and is led by Samantha Joye, PhD, of the University of Georgia. When Joye is not reviewing the gas chromatograph output or mapping underwater oil plumes, she blogs about the team’s work.

The blog describes what the team collected, reams of data that catalogs dissolved oxygen and methane concentrations, outlines the expansion of the underwater oil plumes and surface slicks, quantifies salinity, chlorophyll levels, and water temperature at various depths, and most importantly, documents the presence of CDOM’s,or colored dissolved organic matter—oil. Joye also notes the impotent crowd gathering on the surface of the sea, what she calls “the city of ships.”

She records the ugliness simply, without drama, and so when she offers us a moment of contrast—the ship breaks out of the slick into clear blue water while a pod of spinner dolphins dances off the bow—we see the tragedy fully illuminated.

Read this blog and see photos of the team working at:
http://gulfblog.uga.edu/

WNEG website, accessed 6/20/2010:
http://www.wneg32.tv/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3190:uga-scientists-blog-oil-spill-research&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=18