Friday, May 21, 2010
Oil-Soaked Bird Struggling for Life (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Scientists fear the Obama administration either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know how much damage the Deepwater Horizon accident has caused the Gulf of Mexico. Experts are growing increasingly frustrated with how little scientific information has been released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the amount of oil that has flowed from the broken well and what it might be doing to the marine ecosystem.
So far not a single water test result from the deep ocean, where much of the oil may be residing, has been publicly released by the NOAA. Some scientists believe the Obama administration has been reluctant to push BP, owner of the Deepwater Horizon, to turn over its own ocean samples and data.
“It seems baffling that we don’t know how much oil is being spilled,” said oceanographer Sylvia Earle at a congressional hearing. “It seems baffling that we don’t know where the oil is in the water column.”
Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University, who has questioned the official estimate that 210,000 gallons of oil a day have been discharged from the well, has accused BP of wanting to “hide the body” by withholding information about the spill.
The Obama administration has responded to criticism by citing the fact the government has deployed more than 1,100 ships to contain the spill from reaching the shoreline. But few of these vessels are conducting any kind of scientific research in the Gulf.
The most important of NOAA’s 19 research vessels, the Ronald H. Brown, was off the coast of Africa at the time of the explosion and spill on April 20, but it was not ordered to the Gulf of Mexico until three weeks later. It is still en route.
On Thursday, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson finally sent a letter to Tony Hayward, BP’s group executive chief, demanding that BP post sampling and monitoring information on the Internet.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill (by Justin Gillis, New York Times)
Spill Estimate under Review after Criticism (msnbc.com)
Florida State Scientist: NOAA Ignores Spill Findings (by Monica Hatcher, Houston Chronicle)
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