In a sick way, the Gulf Oil Spill will be a defining moment in physical and biological oceanography

[jpak]

Most folks may not realize that much of what we know about ocean circulation was the result of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and the mass production of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons. As these nasties dissolved in the ocean from the atmosphere, they left a trail of bread crumbs that oceanographers began to follow...

Tracers in the sea : W. S. Broecker and T. H. Peng. Eldigio Press Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory, 1982, 690 pages

and many others...

Satellite imagery of the progression of the current spill will produce updated models of surface ocean circulation in the GOM and elsewhere!



Documentation of the subsurface plumes of methane, sulfide and micron-scale micelle petroleum emulsion -however spotty and incomplete (due to lack of funding !!!!!!11111) - will provide biological oceanographers with new insight how the new and dissolved-oxygen-depleted-multicellular-eukaryote-free central Gulf of Mexico ecosystem operates!

Sorry if I can't post more, my yacht is racing today!

Thank you SOOOoooooo much BP, for your contribution to ocean science...

Please sir, can we have some more?

:puke:

:puke:

:puke:

[Fumesucker]

1. I think it's actually..

Thank you sir, may I have another?

Interesting topic though..

[jpak]

2. I'm sorry, but in this fiction, it's "please sir"

yup

:puke:

[Fumesucker]

3. Here's the scene I was referring to..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdFLPn30dvQ

[joshcryer]

4. Uh, only as a side effect, the primary science will be to follow the destruction...

...and to try to pin down how bad it's affecting the environment and how quickly it is being coped with by nature.

[n2doc]

5. My Phys Ocean colleagues say we really know very little about Gulf Circulation

Especially the subsurface circulation. We are about to find out a lot more on that subject.
There will be a fair amount of funding. BP alone is putting in 50 mill a year for 5 years. That is about the amount NSF puts in to all of ocean science basic research. Of course it won't be enough, we already lag behind the Europeans in basic ocean science.

[jpak]

6. There will be a lot of oil-contaminated CTDs and GoFlo's up for bid on eBay in the next few years

and underway flow-through systems too.

Hope BP replaces all that stuff....and monitors the health of spill workers/researchers for the next 20 years. Breathing that volatile stuff cannot be good.

nope

[n2doc]

7. It's worse than that

They tell me that the o-ring seals on all of these instruments are susceptible to being dissolved by the oil. The advice is to only deploy an instrument for 1 week or less, then replace the seals. Since the usual practice is to deploy something like a current meter for months at a time, this requires a whole different level of effort.

[jpak]

8. I wonder if anything will be publishable given the level of crud those devices will encounter

one CTD cast and your done - the Niskin/GoFlos bottles will be too contaminated for further use.

I suppose they can use a boatload of XBTs instead of CTD casts for temperature profiles though....

I guess long-term sediment trap arrays with ADCP's are not possible either...which is too bad because a lot of that oil will eventually sediment out of the water column....

:(