Deepwater Horizon

From March 30 to April 20, tune in as we go back in time to the day of our country’s largest marine oil spill, what’s happened since then, and how we’re better prepared for future spills. In this 2015 blog, take a look at how one tool helped responders to map the "organized chaos" of the spill. 

Oil spills can impact the environment and the communities in it in a variety of ways — from the deaths of the marine animals and wildlife that come in contact with the oil or polluted plants and water, to the physical damage seen throughout entire ecosystems. But not all impacts are visible with the naked eye. Some lie lurking beneath the surface and may not be apparent until months or even years later. Some of these impacts reside, not in an ecosystem or a body of water, but in the minds of the people closest to the incident. One of the impacts pollution has on people, is on their mental health.

Mote Marine Laboratory was instrumental in the sea turtle rescue efforts during Deepwater Horizon and in honor of World Sea Turtle Day, June 16, Mote is excited to share some of the other work they do with sea turtles through their Sea Turtle Conservation & Research Program. Find out more about Mote’s work to monitor and protect nesting activity in southwest Florida — a hotspot for loggerhead sea turtles — in this day-in-the-life blog by Mote Senior Biologist Melissa Bernhard.

The Sea Grant oil spill outreach team has produced two new publications outlining what scientists know about the fate of that oil in the Gulf of Mexico environment. Those documents, Where did the oil go? A Deepwater Horizon fact sheet and Microbes and oil: What’s the connection? can both be viewed and downloaded at https://gulfseagrant.org/oilspilloutreach/publications/.

Eight years ago today, on April 20, 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon Macondo oil well drilling platform tragically killed 11 workers, and started the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history, releasing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

This blog covers information that will be presented by NOAA Office of Response and Restoration Senior Scientist Lisa DiPinto at the AAAS Conference this week. To check out other presentation topics, visit the AAAS Conference website.

Imagine the perfect day at the beach, lying in the sand, fishing from the pier, maybe taking a boat out on the water. Then an oil spill occurs, and the beach is no longer a fun place to be.

Two popular marine animals—dolphins and sea turtles—are the focus of new publications from the Sea Grant Oil Spill Science Outreach Team. In the aftermath of the largest oil spill in history, many expressed concern about its impact on these long-lived, slow-to-mature creatures. Now, almost seven years after the spill, scientists have a better understanding of how they fared. The team examined this research, synthesizing peer-reviewed findings into two easy-to-understand outreach bulletins.