http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/25/gulf-dolphin-deaths-investigation_n_840566.html

Posted: 03/25/11 10:52 AM

BILOXI, Mississippi — The U.S. government is keeping a tight lid on its probe into scores of unexplained dolphin deaths along the Gulf Coast, possibly connected to last year’s BP oil spill, causing tension with some independent marine scientists.

Wildlife biologists contracted by the National Marine Fisheries Service to document spikes in dolphin mortality and to collect specimens and tissue samples for the agency were quietly ordered late last month to keep their findings confidential.

The gag order was contained in an agency letter informing outside scientists that its review of the dolphin die-off, classified as an “unusual mortality event (UME),” had been folded into a federal criminal investigation launched last summer into the oil spill.

“Because of the seriousness of the legal case, no data or findings may be released, presented or discussed outside the UME investigative team without prior approval,” the letter, obtained by Reuters, stated.

A number of scientists said they have been personally rebuked by federal officials for “speaking out of turn” to the media about efforts to determine the cause of some 200 dolphin deaths this year, and about 90 others last year, in the Gulf.

Moreover, they said collected samples and specimens are being turned over to the government for analysis under a protocol that will leave independent scientists in the dark about the efficacy and outcome of any laboratory tests.

TRANSPARENCY UNDERMINED?

Some researchers designated as official “partners” in the agency’s Marine Mammal Stranding Network complained such constraints undermine the transparency of a process normally open to review by the scientific community.

“It throws accountability right out the window,” one biologist involved in tracking dolphin deaths for more than 20 years told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “We are confused and … we are angry because they claim they want teamwork, but at the same time they are leaving the marine experts out of the loop completely.”

Some question why the Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has taken so long to get samples into laboratories.

“It is surprising that it has been almost a full year since the spill, and they still haven’t selected labs for this kind of work,” said Ruth Carmichael, who studies marine mammals at the independent Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama.

“I can only hope that this process is a good thing. I just don’t know. This is an unfortunate situation.”
NOAA officials expressed sympathy but insisted the control and confidentiality measures were necessary.

“We are treating the evidence, which are the dolphin samples, like a murder case,” said Dr. Erin Fougeres, a marine biologist with the Fisheries Service. “The chain of custody is being closely watched. Every dolphin sample is considered evidence in the BP case now.”

METHODICAL APPROACH

Blair Mase, a marine mammal scientist for NOAA, said lab results would go directly back to the Fisheries Service in about two to three months.

“We have to be very methodical,” Mase said. “The criminal investigation does play a role in the delay of findings, but it has to be done this way.”

As of this week, scientists have counted nearly 200 bottlenose dolphin carcasses found since mid-January along the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, about half of them newly born or stillborn infants.

That tally, about 14 times the numbers averaged during that time of year between 2002 and 2007, coincides with the first dolphin calving season in the northern Gulf since BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded last April.

The blast killed 11 workers and ruptured a wellhead on the sea floor, dumping an estimated 5 million barrels (206 million gallons) of oil into the Gulf over more than three months.

Nearly 90 dead dolphins, most of them adults, washed up along the Gulf Coast last year in the weeks and months following the blowout.

The latest spike in deaths, and high concentration of premature infants among them, has led some experts to speculate that oil ingested or inhaled by dolphins during the spill has taken a belated toll on the animals, possibly leading to a wave of dolphin miscarriages.

But most of the specimens collected bear no obvious signs of oil contamination, making lab analysis crucial to understanding what caused the deaths.

Mase said the carcasses also are considered potential evidence in the natural resources damage assessment being conducted in conjunction with civil litigation pursued against BP by the government simultaneously with the criminal probe.

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

by Timothy B. Hurst on February 1, 2011

http://ecopolitology.org/2011/02/01/cornfields-vs-oilfields-infographic/

In light of recent remarks from Newt Gingrich in support of corn ethanol, as well as a new EPA report about the high environmental costs of corn ethanol, this infographic Online Schools approached us with couldn’t be more timely.

http://www.gfmag.com/latestnews/latest-news-old.html?newsid=9815285.0
—

(Adds information from oil release at a nearby platform on Saturday in paragraph eight, additional comments from Coast Guard captain throughout.)

By Ryan Dezember
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

HOUSTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Coast Guard and local government officials said an oil-like substance of unknown origin is washing ashore in parts of Louisiana that were among the hardest hit by BP PLC’s (BP, BP.LN) Deepwater Horizon oil spill last year.

The Coast Guard and a parish spokeswoman said they have mobilized oil-spill-response equipment and the Coast Guard has hired a contractor to lay containment booms in hopes of stopping the substance from penetrating inland waters and ecologically sensitive shorelines.

“We’re not clear where this is from,” said Coast Guard Capt. Jonathan Burton, who is based in Morgan City, La. “We don’t have an identifiable responsible party.”

Photos taken by Jefferson Parish officials show globs of reddish matter coming ashore on Elmer’s Island, a state wildlife sanctuary, that look very similar to the oil that washed on to northern Gulf beaches during last summer’s oil spill.

Other photographs, taken off Port Fourchon, depict vast stretches of the Gulf’s surface coated in a thin film and streaked with bright orange streams of thick matter.

The substance was first reported along Louisiana’s coast on Saturday, said Kriss Fortunato, a Jefferson Parish spokeswoman. On Sunday, however, the substance came ashore in greater amounts, coating miles of beaches, she said.

Jefferson Parish has no official estimate of how much of the material has reached land or lurks in near-shore waters, but “it’s a significant amount,” Fortunato said. Sheen believed to be associated with the goopy material reportedly stretches on the Gulf’s surface for miles, she said.

The Coast Guard said it does not suspect that the goopy matter is residual oil from BP’s 4.9-million-barrel spill. The agency is investigating whether the incoming oily substance could be related to crude released by a hurricane-damaged platform last Saturday, but so far there is no evidence that the two incidents are related, Burton said.

The platform, owned by Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners LLC, leaked an undetermined amount of oil for between four and six hours during an operation to permanently seal it, Burton said. Executives with the privately held company were not immediately available for comment.

Burton added that the clean-up and containment effort is currently being paid for by the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, a federal organization that holds oil royalties to cover spill-cleaning costs.

Both the local government and the Coast Guard have taken samples and of the matter and are performing tests independent of one another.

So far, the substance has washed ashore on Grand Isle, Fourchon Beach and Elmer’s Island. A sheen that is associated with oil spills has also been reported on the surface of Timbalier Bay, west of Grand Isle, the Coast Guard said.

Some 10,000 feet of boom has already been deployed on Grand Isle and an additional 19,000 feet of both hard and absorbent floating barrier has been ordered for the operation, Burton said in a news release.

The Coast Guard has hired environmental-response company ES&H to begin cleaning up the oily substance and has authorized the disaster-response contractor to buy whatever additional boom and equipment is needed to contain and clean up the substance.

In a separate investigation, the Coast Guard has determined that what was reported Saturday as potentially a miles-long oil slick is actually a plume of silt emanating from the Mississippi River.

Samples from the plume taken from a Coast Guard cutter have found only trace amounts of oil and grease in the murky cloud.

“At this point, the dark substance is believed to be caused by a tremendous amount of sediment being carried down the Mississippi River due to high water, possibly further agitated by dredging operations,” the Coast Guard said in a news release.

Some sightings relayed to the Coast Guard had the plume stretching from about six miles south of the Louisiana shoreline to 100 miles offshore.

-By Ryan Dezember, Dow Jones Newswires; 713-547-9208;
Ryan.Dezember@dowjones.com;

(END)
March 21, 2011 15:22 ET (19:22 GMT)

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/dcblog/2011/03/does_cuban_oil_drilling_put_fl_1.html

Bob Graham’s recommendation for a mutual US-Mexico-Cuba safety response plan makes good sense and should be pursued despite the Cuban embargo. DV

By William Gibson
March 17, 2011 11:13 AM

Cuba has contracted with Repsol, a Spanish company, to dig exploratory offshore oil wells along its north coast beginning this year, a prospect that alarms Florida environmentalists and some members of Congress.

Florida leaders for years have struggled to maintain a federal ban on drilling in U.S. waters near the state’s shores, though some Republicans more recently have proposed expanded offshore production to generate jobs, raise revenue and boost U.S. supplies of oil and natural gas.

The Cuban wells would explore the narrow Florida Straits only 50 miles from the fragile ecosystem of the Florida Keys. The rigs would be directly in the path of the Gulf Stream, a powerful current that carries water alongside the South Florida beaches and up the East Coast.

“We aim to drill in Cuba in the second half of this year,” company spokesman Kristian Rix said on Thursday.

“Regarding safety, we are confirdent that we have the right personnel and materials to drill safely and succesfully in the area,” he said.

Repsol, an energy giant, has long experience with offshore operations.

Nevertheless, environmentalists worry about the prospect of rigs so close to marine sanctuaries in the Keys. The Deepwater Horizon spill south of Louisiana last summer, which fouled the Gulf Coast and ruined its tourist season, demonstrated the risks of a big spill.

Former Florida Senator Bob Graham urged U.S. officials on Wednesday to form a pact with Cuba and Mexico to enforce safety standards and establish disaster-response plans in case of a spill.

“Potential sites are close enough to the United States that if an accident like the Deepwater Horizon spill occurs, fisheries, coastal tourism and other valuable U.S. natural resources could be put at great risk,” Graham and William Reilly, co-chairmen of a national commission on offshore drilling, told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Graham, a Democrat from Miami Lakes, said he and Reilly plan to meet with Mexican officials next month to press for a regional agreement on drilling practices to guard against another disaster. He said that Mexico, which has closer ties to Cuba, could act as an intermediary for establishing a regional agreement.

“We have no comment on the agreement on standards,” said Rix, “other than that we operate to the highest international standards and will continue to do so, always respecting the legal framework.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2011/03/evaporating_oil_from_bp_spill.html#incart_mce

Published: Thursday, March 10, 2011, 5:58 PM
Updated: Thursday, March 10, 2011, 5:59 PM
By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune

A new study about the way oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon accident evaporated into the air confirms that cleanup workers were exposed to high levels of airborne pollution, and that the fumes also may have made their way onshore in Louisiana.

The study does not attempt to assess the resulting health and environmental effects.

The study’s authors also found that the way fumes from the oil combined with particles already in the air could provide a major clue to the way harmful air pollution forms from vehicle and other exhausts in urban areas.

Last June, scientists took air samples during flights over the vast area where oil was on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

The researchers found that 30 percent of the oil that made its way to the surface was made up of “light volatile organic carbon molecules” that evaporated within 10 hours. Another 10 to 20 percent of the surface oil was made up of heavier compounds that took several days to evaporate.

The lighter compounds combined with particles in the air and were found in a narrow plume stretching from the Macondo well northwest towards the mouth of the Mississippi River. A much wider plume of aerosols associated with the heavier compounds was found stretching across the northern edge of the oil, also moving northwest with prevailing winds towards the Louisiana coastline.

While the report does not directly address the environmental and human health effects of the aerosols, the results do indicate that offshore clean-up workers were exposed to both the vapors and the aerosol compounds, and that prevailing winds may have carried the aerosols onshore, said Joost de Gouw, lead author of the peer-reviewed report in the March 11 edition of Science magazine.

“These concentrations were high,” de Gouw said. “They are much higher than what you and I are exposed to in cities. We need to have a closer look at how these plumes of aerosol impacted people on shore.”

Some of those concerns will be addressed in future research papers by members of the same scientific team, which includes de Gouw, a research scientist with NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory and the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences in Boulder, Colo., other NOAA scientists and researchers with the University of Colorado, University of Miami, University of California-Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the National Center for Atmospheric Resarch.

While the study does not attempt to assess the pollutants’ health effects on workers or civilians, the differing evaporation rates support a theory that half of urban air pollution comes from organic aerosol particles from the slower-evaporating oil found in vehicle exhaust.

“Down the line, we may have to reduce emissions of these compounds to improve air quality,” said de Gouw.

In urban areas, scientists have been unable to distinguish between the aerosols formed by lighter and heavier organic compounds because they’re often also associated with heavier nitrogen oxide compounds, deGouw said.

The BP spill provided a laboratory-like setting that allowed separate reviews of the lighter compounds — which quickly attached themselves to particles in the air in the narrow plume — and the broader area of heavier compounds, which took much longer to attach to particles and form aerosols.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2006 tightened its regulations of particulate matter to limit the amount of particles that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller to 35 micrograms per cubic meter of air. It would take several thousand particles of that size to fill the period at the end of this sentence.

Larger particles, sized 2.5 to 10 micrometers, are limited to 150 micrograms per cubic meter of air because they also cause fewer health problems.

When inhaled, both sizes of particles can reach deep inside of lungs, resulting in health problems, ranging from aggravated asthma to premature death in people with heart and lung disease. Particle pollution also is the main cause of visibility impairment in cities and national parks.

A podcast on this study featuring de Gouw is available on the web through CIRES at http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/2011/gulf-air-quality.html.

An abstract of study is available on the web at www.sciencemag.org.

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Special thanks to Richard Charter