Launching the Armada

Since those first long but easy days of reading and getting acclimated, I have been swept with maximum velocity into the vortex of designing and planning the offshore marine assessment work for the NRDA (damage assessment from the spill). I thought I would be working in the nearshore group, but I ended up being given a really great opportunity to work with an oceanographer on this project. We have worked hard, and I know our proposals are excellent. The project leaders on the marine assessment have both heaped the responsibilities and challenges on me, and I have really enjoyed it, despite the very, very long work days.

We just presented our final proposals today in a briefing with BP, who approved them all. If NOAA approves the study plans, we will be launching 6 research cruises next week. Two ships will do acoustic mapping of the sub-surface oil plumes. The red ship at the top of this post is an acoustic surveying vessel, the R/V Ridley Thomas, about 200' long.

Two other ships will do oceanographic measurements and water sampling far offshore, only looking at the upper 100 m (300 feet) (the euphotic zone where most of the critters live). Another two ships will work between the wellhead and 20 miles out in every direction. I will be the chief scientist on one of those boats, the Bunny Bordelon...



The objective of all the study plans is to document where the oil is, and where it isn't. We aren't working on the coastline or looking at the surface slick... we will be looking for underwater plumes from the surface down to full ocean depths, about 1,600 m (>5,2000 ft)!!

The "Bunny" ship I will be chief sci on is about 150' long and has full ocean depth instruments to measure conductivity, temperature, salinity, depth, and dissolved oxygen (CTD/DO), fluorescence (which detects oil to concentrations as low as 4 parts per billion), plus an ROV and rosette sampler that can collect water samples at pre-programmed depths. The ROV also has video and digital stills to capture images of oil in the water column and turn the images into 3-D holograms so the droplet size can be measured. How trippy.

This oceanographer and I literally put a plan together for two cruises sometime Wednesday night last week, and since then everything has been so rapid and hectic. The program managers liked our stuff so much that it became incorporated into the main Gulf-wide, long-term study plan. It escalated. This is a cool schematic of how the acoustic surveying vessel (the Ridley) will work with the water sampling and profiling ship (the Bunny, which I will be on)...



Now I've been working to stock all 6 boats with the crew and sampling gear they need. The oceanographer I'm working with coordinates the boats and the oceanographic instruments. There are many, many people working on this and we all had lots of help. We won't be cleaning up oil, but we will be trying to better understand where it is in the marine environment, and what it's impact is. We'll also be looking at water toxicity (by doing ship-board experiments with rotifers using a portable kit called "rototox"). Water samples will be collected at 8 depths from the surface to the seafloor, which will be sent to labs for chemical analysis like concentrations of dispersants and hydrocarbons.


"Rototox" kit


A rotifer... may have to give its life for science...

The dispersant has really helped break up the oil in the water column... but you then have to worry about the downstream effects of the dispersant! Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I was supposed to go home at the end of my 2 week rotation, which would have been this weekend. But since the cruises leave next week and I have to lead one of them, they don't want me to rotate out. I think what will happen is I'll have two days off where they cover my hotel and rental car, but I can just relax or go to New Orleans or something. They call it "Rest In Place." Then Wed. of next week, we'll launch the armada of research vessels, and I'll be at sea for 10-12 days.

Pictures will be forthcoming when I'm finally in the field. Take care all.