The Gulf oil spill is recognized as the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Within days of the April 20, 2010 explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people, remote underwater cameras revealed the BP pipe was leaking oil and gas on the ocean floor about 42 miles off the coast of Louisiana. By the time the well was capped on July 15, 2010 (87 days later), an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil had leaked into the Gulf.
The well is located 5,000 feet beneath the water’s surface in the vast frontier of the deep sea—a permanently dark environment, marked by constantly cold temperatures just above freezing and extremely high pressures. Scientists divide the ocean into at least three zones, and the deep ocean accounts for about three-quarters of Earth’s total ocean volume.
Immediately after the explosion, workers from BP and Transocean (owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig), and many government agencies tried to control the spread of the oil to beaches and other coastal ecosystems using floating booms to contain surface oil and chemical oil dispersants to break it down underwater. Additionally, numerous scientists and researchers descended upon the Gulf region to gather data. Researchers are still trying to understand the spill and its impact on marine life, the Gulf coast, and human communities.
Three years later, the Gulf is still not oil free.
Science
The Spill
Over 87 days, the damaged Macondo wellhead in the deep sea—around 5,000 feet down—leaked an estimate 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making the spill the largest accidental spill in history. Once the oil left the well, it spread throughout the water column. Some floated to the ocean surface to form oil slicks, which can spread more quickly by being pushed by winds. Some floated in the midwater, rising from the wellhead like a chimney and forming a 22-mile long oil plume. This plume formed because chemical dispersants, released into the water to break up the oil so it could wash away, allowed the oil to mix with seawater and stay suspended below the surface. And some oil sunk to the seafloor by gluing together falling particles in the water such as marine snow. As much as 30% of the spilled oil may have ended up on the seafloor, damaging deep sea corals and potentially damaging other ecosystems that are unseen at the surface.
Collections
The Smithsonian's Department of Invertebrate Zoology has a collection of over 57,000 specimens from over 5,700 sites in the Gulf of Mexico, which are now catalogued on Google Earth
Smithsonian holdings may show oil's impact in Gulf
As scientists in the Gulf collect organisms potentially affected by the oil, they’ll need to compare them to animals from previous decades to identify how they’ve changed, if at all.
Here's where Smithsonian Collections can play a role. Soon after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Smithsonian Collections staff plotted invertebrate holdings from the Gulf onto Google Earth. Since 1979, invertebrate specimens have been deposited in the national collections of the National Museum of Natural History's Department of Invertebrate Zoology. In the Gulf of Mexico, more than 57,000 invertebrates (points on the map) from 5,789 distinct collecting sites from 14 Mineral Management Service survey programs (point colors) have been cataloged.
Following the Deepwater Horizon incident in late April 2010, collections staff updated the files to reflect the latest areas affected by the spill in real-time. “The points on the map represent less than half of our Gulf of Mexico holdings, the rest—approximately 75,000—still need to be processed and cataloged,” said Bill Moser, museum specialist.
Research
Oil Spill Lessons from Panama
A Smithsonian study of a 1986 oil spill on the coast of Panama is attracting renewed interest for its insights into the effects of oil spills on coastal systems. Working with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, marine ecologist Dr. Jeremy Jackson and a team of researchers examined the spill’s immediate and long-term effects on the coast in Bahia las Minas, Panama.
The benchmark study (PDF), published in 1989, documented the damage oil causes to coastal and tidal habitats. It's particularly notable because it includes 15 years of ecological data about the area before the spill collected by the Smithsonian. The affected area includes the Smithsonian biological reserve known as the Galeta Marine Laboratory. “What we learned, in a nutshell, was never, ever, ever, ever allow oil to get into a complex coastal system of mangroves, sea grasses, and coral reefs because you’ll never get it out,” said Dr. Jackson.
In this video interview with the Smithsonian Ocean Portal, he reflects on the Panama study and its implications for the Gulf oil spill, and reminds listeners that the greatest threats to the ocean—overfishing, climate change, and other types of pollution—combined actually exceed the devastation the unfolded in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. “If there’s any silver lining in the [Gulf] oil spill,” he said, “it’s that it might make us wake up to the magnitude of what we’re dealing with.”
Featured Scientist
Dr. Chris Reddy, Marine Chemist
At Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Chris Reddy studies the long-term effects of oil spills, as well as natural oil seeps that occur off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. In this video, watch as he digs beneath the surface in Wild Harbor salt marsh in Cape Cod, Massachusetts to find layers of oil from a spill that occurred more than 40 years ago. This leftover oil continues to impact the wetland's ecology and wildlife. “When this spill first occurred in 1969, about a month after I was born, people thought that it would only last a week,” he says. And to the naked eye, the marsh looks beautiful and pristine. But oil has persisted in the sediments and continues to adversely affect the marsh’s mussels, crabs, and grasses. “Oil can last for a long time and has a lot of biological impact.” In June 2010, Dr. Reddy testified before a Congressional panel investigating the Gulf oil spill.
Technology
Underwater robot
In May 2010, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) sent a high-tech robotic submersible to the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico. This autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) was programmed at the surface, and then navigated through the water on its own, collecting information on deep oil plumes from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident. Although satellites and aircraft helped show the extent of the spill at the surface, researchers hoped that the AUV would allow them understand what was happening farther down in the water column.
During the NOAA-sponsored expedition, MBARI's AUV mapped part of a plume 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) below the surface, and collected water samples at various depths. The resulting data helped the researchers identify a persistent deep oil plume and link the oil in this plume to its source: the Deepwater Horizon blowout.
Threats & Solutions
Read for yourself as Dr. Sylvia Earle makes the case for saving the Gulf of Mexico and investing in its further study and exploration. Learn about turtle rescue efforts in the Gulf and documenting life after the oil spill. Get an overview of resources dedicated to assessing the human health risks from oil, dispersants, and contaminated sea food.
Human health risks
In the immediate aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, concerns about public health focused on people coming into direct contact with the oil and dispersants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered safety advice to Gulf Coast residents and relief workers. And the EPA conducted toxicity tests on dispersants. However, longterm questions about oil spills and their impact on human health remain. The National Institutes of Health plans to address these in a study that will track 55,000 cleanup workers and volunteers for a decade. The research will assess whether exposure to crude oil and dispersants has an effect on physical and mental health.
As the days, weeks, and months progressed the indirect impacts related to seafood consumption have also gained attention. The chemicals in oil that are of most concern to humans are called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Some of these are known to cause cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is charged with monitoring the levels of PAHs in Gulf Coast seafood. It works in conjunction with NOAA, the EPA, and state agencies to determine which fisheries are safe to open and which ones should remain closed. In order for a fishery to be reopened, it must pass both a "smell" test and a chemical analysis. Seafood cannot go to market if it contains harmful levels of PAHs or if it emits an odor associated with petroleum or dispersants. Fishing area closures peaked on June 2, 2010, when 88,522 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico were off-limits. On April 19, 2011, NOAA announced that commercial and recreational fishing could resume in all of the federal waters that were affected by the spill.
One of many Kemp’s ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys kempii) recovering at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Turtles were cleaned and nursed back to health with the help of New England Aquarium staff.
Rescuing Animals in the Oil Spill
Pictures of pelicans, sea turtles, and other Gulf of Mexico wildlife struggling in oil were among some of the most disturbing images of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in 2010. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, thousands of “visibly” oiled animals —which includes birds, sea turtles, and marine mammals--were collected by authorities in the vicinity of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Many of the animals were already dead, but for those found alive, dozens of organizations, including the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park and the New England Aquarium (NEA), were mobilized to rescue, rehabilitate, and later release animals affected by the spill. National Zoo personnel were dispatched to the Gulf largely to assist with the process of relocating animals affected by the spill and helping to identify future release sites for those rescued. Dr. Luis Padilla, a Zoo veterinarian who helped with a pelican release in Texas, and Dr. Judilee Marrow were among those who assisted in the Gulf.
NEA staff who helped to rehabilitate sea turtles rescued from the Gulf oil spill offered a behind-the-scenes view on the aquarium’s Marine Animal Rescue Team Blog. The blog described how rescuers in boats and spotter planes were “looking for rounded mounds on the surface of the oil, which usually means that there is a turtle floating under the surface of the oil." The rescue team, based at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans, treated dozens of endangered sea turtles, such as Kemp's ridley, loggerheads, green sea turtles, and hawksbills. To learn more about how oil affects marine life, watch this video from the Pew Environment Group that explains the impact of oil on marine life throughout the water column and check out this fact sheet from U.S. Fish and Wildlife which summarizes “Effects of Oil on Wildlife and Habitat.” We may not know the full effects of the spill on animals - both big and small - for years to come.
The Case for the Gulf
In testimony before a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dr. Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and former chief scientist of NOAA, offered specific suggestions for addressing the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf and delivered an impassioned call for greater investment in ocean research—including more expeditions to explore the Gulf’s deep waters, establishing permanent monitoring stations and protocols, and encouraging tri-national collaboration among scientists and institutions around the Gulf. “No one has descended to the greatest depth in the Gulf of Mexico, about three miles down in the Sigsbee Deep near Yucatan. In fact, no one knows for sure exactly where the deepest place in the Gulf is, or if they do, proving it has been an elusive goal,” she said.
The Oil Spill was Terrible
I would just like to say that this was terrible. I hope everything gets cleaned up fast :c