Gulf Oil Spill: Government Remains Blind To Underwater Oil Hazard

[Are_grits_groceries]

The Obama administration is actively trying to dismiss media reports that vast plumes of oil lurk beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, unmeasured and uncharted.

But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose job it is to assess and track the damage being caused by the BP oil spill that began four weeks ago, is only monitoring what's visible -- the slick on the Gulf's surface -- and currently does not have a single research vessel taking measurements below.

The one ship associated with NOAA that had been doing such research is back in Pascagoula, Miss., having completed a week-long cruise during which scientists taking underwater samples found signs of just the kind of plume that environmentalists fear could have devastating effects on sea life of all shapes and sizes.

Meanwhile, the commander of the NOAA vessel that the White House on Friday claimed in a press release "is now providing information for oil spill related research" told HuffPost on Tuesday that he's actually far away, doing something else entirely.

"We are in the Western Gulf doing plankton research," said Commander Dave Score, reached by satellite phone on his research vessel, the Gordon Gunter. "So I really don't know. I'm just on orders."
<snip>
"They should have had a preexisting rapid response plan," he told HuffPost. "They should have had vessels of opportunity -- shrimp vessels, any vessel that can deploy a water-column sampling device -- pre-contracted, on a list, to be called up in an event that this happened. And they blew it. And it's been going on for a month now, and all that information has been lost."

Steiner gave credit to the scientists on the Pelican, but noted that at most they had sampled less than 1 percent of the affected waters. "The Pelican happened to drop some of their sampling devices into a plume and found it, but there have to be plumes elsewhere, and the biological implication are vast."

NOAA officials "haven't picked it up because they haven't looked in the right places," he said. "There have to be dozens of these massive plumes of toxic Deepwater Horizon oil, and they haven't set out to delineate them in any shape or form."

There's much more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/18/gulf-oil-spill-government_n_580815.html

WTF is going on??? I don't believe anybody anymore.

[nashville_brook]

1. so, the White House lied about the Gordon Gunter in a press release -- not good.

not good at all.

[Swamp Rat]

2. we are fucked

ALL of us

[tsuki]

3. We have been saying blow it since the leak started. The Gulf is

dead, and the spill is going to continue up the eastern seaboard to the Arctic. Obama's Katrina? After a month, yeah.

[nashville_brook]

4. k n r

[Catherina]

5. I was hoping this was untrue but it's not. Here's a screenshot from the WH

NOAA Research Ship Re-Deployed to Spill Response

The NOAA Ship Gordon Gunter, previously scheduled to conduct plankton research in the Gulf of Mexico, is now providing information for oil spill related research.

Here's a screenshot from http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/05/ongoing-administration-wide-response-deepwater-bp-oil-spill



The blue line marks where I snipped the page to make it fit.


Another link to the Press Release is here: http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/551775/

Not. Looking. Good.

[amborin]

7. part of their massive pr response

only problem is, it's limited to p.r.

[Lorien]

8. So it seems. I thought the non-action Whitehouse response

would have ended with 2008. :-(

[rhett o rick]

6. Come on Pres Obama. We want change. We voted for change. Give us some f'n change. nm