October 16, 2010 - Swimming the English Channel is mere warm-up for some people. Nearly 1,200 people have swum those 21 miles, including grandfathers, children and amputees. Steven Munatones, a coach and marathon swimming guru, thought swimmers needed more challenges, so he devised the Ocean's Seven — a list of channels that a well-rounded marathoner should master — and posted it on his website devoted to distance swimming. Ocean's Seven is the marathon swimming equivalent of the mountain climbing challenge Seven Summits, though unlike that, Ocean's Seven has never been completed. The "Seven" referred to by the title are the Irish Channel, the Cook Strait, the Molokai Channel, the English Channel, the Catalina Channel, the Tsugaru Strait and the Strait of Gibraltar. Most swimmers say the toughest are the Molokai Channel in Hawaii, at 26 miles, and the frigid North Channel between Scotland and Northern Ireland. Full story from Suzanne Satalin at WSJ.com.
Visit Steve Munatones' website here.
Coastlines
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October 7, 2010 - A preliminary report released Wednesday by the federal commission investigating the BP oil spill blames the Obama administration for misrepresenting "the amount and fate of the oil" in the Gulf of Mexico.
"By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf," the report says, "the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem."
When the Deepwater Horizon oil well exploded and sank last April, the government first estimated that 1,000 barrels a day were coming out of the leaking well. Then the number jumped fivefold then much, much higher... The commission traces many such instances during the spill where the Obama administration ignored or obscured existing scientific methods and evidence, ultimately giving the public inaccurate information and damaging the government's credibility.
Here's more from Ari Shapiro at WBUR.
Obama Admin Criticized for Gulf Oil Response
October 7, 2010 - A preliminary report released Wednesday by the federal commission investigating the BP oil spill blames the Obama administration for misrepresenting "the amount and fate of the oil" in the Gulf of Mexico."By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf," the report says, "the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem."
When the Deepwater Horizon oil well exploded and sank last April, the government first estimated that 1,000 barrels a day were coming out of the leaking well. Then the number jumped fivefold then much, much higher... The commission traces many such instances during the spill where the Obama administration ignored or obscured existing scientific methods and evidence, ultimately giving the public inaccurate information and damaging the government's credibility.
Here's more from Ari Shapiro at WBUR.
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Coastlines
EPA Sued For Cape Cod Dirty Water
August 26, 2010 - The Conservation Law Foundation and the Coalition for Buzzards Bay have filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to regulate the discharge of nitrogen into Cape Cod's bays. "The destruction of Cape Cod's bays and estuaries must not be allowed to continue unchecked," Conservation Law Foundation President John Kassel said in a statement. "Decades of foot-dragging are now threatening the very lifeblood of the Cape. We know the culprit and we know the solution." The EPA must make the cleanup of Cape Cod waters a priority as it has done with Chesapeake Bay, he said. Here's the full story from Mark Pratt Boston.com.
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But... Berkeley Nat'l Lab Study Finds New Microbe Eating Oil Faster than Anticipated
August 24, 2010 - A new study from the Earth Sciences Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab finds that the oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from the ruptured BP well degraded at a rate that was "much faster than anticipated," thanks to the interaction of a newly-found and unclassified species of microbes with the oil particles. Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division and the Energy Biosciences Institute examined a dispersed oil plume that was formed at a depth of between 3,600 and 4,000 feet and extended some 10 miles out from the wellhead.
"Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea psychrophilic (cold-temperature) gamma-proteobacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes," said Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist and principal investigator on the study. The cold-temperature bacteria "appears to be one of the major mechanisms behind the rapid decline of the deepwater dispersed oil plume that has been observed," Hazen said. here's more from Vivian Kuo at CNN.
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Report Says 80% of Spilled Oil Remains in Gulf
August 24, 2010 - A report released last week by the Georgia Sea Grant and the University of Georgia concludes that up to 79 percent of the oil released into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon well has not been recovered and remains a threat to the ecosystem.
The report, authored by five prominent marine scientists, strongly contradicts media reports that suggest that only 25 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill remains.
“One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless,” said Charles Hopkinson, director of Georgia Sea Grant and professor of marine sciences in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade. We are still far from a complete understanding of what its impacts are.”
Co-authors on the paper include Jay Brandes, associate professor, Skidaway Institute of Oceanography; Samantha Joye, professor of marine sciences, UGA; Richard Lee, professor emeritus, Skidaway; and Ming-yi Sun, professor of marine sciences UGA.
The group analyzed data from the Aug. 2 National Incident Command Report, which calculated an “oil budget” that was widely interpreted to suggest that only 25 percent of the oil from the spill remained.
Hopkinson notes that the reports arrive at different conclusions largely because the Sea Grant and UGA scientists estimate that the vast majority of the oil classified as dispersed, dissolved or residual is still present, whereas the NIC report has been interpreted to suggest that only the “residual” form of oil is still present.
Hopkinson said that his group also estimated how much of the oil could have evaporated, degraded or weathered as of the date of the report. Using a range of reasonable evaporation and degradation estimates, the group calculated that 70-79 percent of oil spilled into the Gulf still remains. The group showed that it was impossible for all the dissolved oil to have evaporated because only oil at the surface of the ocean can evaporate into the atmosphere and large plumes of oil are trapped in deep water.
Another difference is that the NIC report estimates that 4.9 million barrels of oil were released from the wellhead, while the Sea Grant report uses a figure of 4.1 million barrels since .8 million barrels were piped directly from the well to surface ships and, therefore, never entered Gulf waters.
On a positive note, the group noted that natural processes continue to transform, dilute, degrade and evaporate the oil. They add that circular current known as the Franklin Eddy is preventing the Loop Current from bringing oil-contaminated water from the Gulf to the Atlantic, which bodes well for the East Coast.
Joye said that both the NIC report and the Sea Grant report are best estimates and emphasizes the need for a sustained and coordinated research effort to better understand the impacts of what has become the world’s worst maritime oil spill. She warned that neither report accounted for hydrocarbon gasses such as methane in their oil budgets.
“That’s a gaping hole,” Joye said, “because hydrocarbon gasses are a huge portion of what was ejected from the well.”
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