When responding to an oil spill, it’s important to get a look at the spill from every possible angle — both from land, from sea, and even, from space. Oil spill response teams in federal and state governments face challenges in offshore surveillance, simply due to the lack of observations over open water (compared to land).

Deepwater Horizon is arguably the most high profile oil spill to have occurred in the U.S., but what’s little known is that dozens of small, human-caused oil discharges happen in U.S. waters every single day – and there are likely many more that go undetected and unreported. 

This feature is part of a monthly series profiling scientists and technicians who provide exemplary contributions to the mission of NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R). This month’s scientist is Amy MacFadyen, an oceanographer in OR&R’s oil spill response program. She responds to oil and chemical spills across the country, and leads the development of the GNOME™ suite for oil spill modeling.

During the first week of September, Hurricane Florence, a Category 4 hurricane still located hundreds of miles offshore, was setting its sights to make landfall somewhere along the North Carolina-South Carolina coast. While some residents waited to see exactly where its path would lead, others decided to heed warnings issued by the governor of North Carolina to evacuate their low-lying coastal homes. As impact became imminent, NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) began tracking the storm’s path and intensity. 

This month OR&R responded to 15 incidents, including oil discharges, sunken vessels, and hazardous material releases. During the 2018 fiscal year, OR&R responded to 201 spills — the second highest total in our team’s history and the second year in a row we’ve had more than 200 incidents.

Here are some of September’s notable incidents ...

On Sept. 14, 2018 NOAA and project partners took an explosive step in the Bloede Dam project. Following 10 years of planning, and three weeks after partners celebrated, the explosives were detonated. Immediately the dam was breached. Water and sediment began pouring over the giant structure. Any lingering concrete will be manually removed. The Bloede Dam removal was the largest and most complicated in NOAA’s history, and a major victory for communities along the Patapsco River.

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, Sept. 25, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross presented NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration with the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for leadership in the aftermath of the 2017 Atlantic hurricanes during a ceremony in the District of Columbia.

The Department of Commerce recognized OR&R for its ““innovative leadership in responding to coastal threats resulting from three Category 4 hurricanes in under 27 days during the 2017 hurricane season.”

Phillips Creek Marsh lies on the eastern seaside stretch of the Delmarva Peninsula in Virginia. The marsh is a swath of wetland grasses with patches of reeds and warped remnants of a boardwalk. Pines fringe the marsh, and a flock of seabirds socialize on a distant mudflat to the southeast.

Washington resident Kavya Varkey joined NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration for an internship this summer at the NOAA Western Regional Center in Seattle. A senior this year at Sammamish High School in Bellevue, Washington, Kavya says she’s always been drawn to science. Her interest has continued to develop and come into focus, and she plans to pursue an education that will lead to a career in environmental science.