The BP oil disaster continues. Large amounts of oil continue to foul the Gulf of Mexico around the site of BP's blown out Macondo well.
We flew today to find whale sharks, so that scientists who were out there in a boat could fit them with tags that would report their gps positions and ultimately tell us more about them. The seas were utterly calm, like glass. The bait balls were glistening everywhere as we flew to open seas south of Grand Isle about 100 miles. We were so optimistic! Alas, in over six hours of flying covering almost 600 miles, not a one was found today. Nor a single sperm whale. We found two huge pods of bottlenose dolphin, one with over 100 individuals, another with at least 75. And a couple of fine leatherback sea turtles. But between those sightings -- and sometimes uncomfortably close to them, all we found was what we are so very tired of seeing -- more and more OIL.
In fact, we found so much oil out in the Macondo Prospect (near the site of the April 2010 explosion), that we have an 11-minute video of it that never covers the same area twice! Not since last summer have we seen this kind of expansive surface sheen. Metallic-gray and rainbow swirls stretched for miles, mixed with dark-brown stuff that resembled weathered crude more than sargassum weed. And there were those round-shaped 'globs' of oil again, here, there, and everywhere it seemed. We did not want to see this stuff anymore!
The oil has been analyzed at LSU's labs and been found very likely to be BP Macondo well crude. Seeps from the depth of the Macondo well generally don't reach the surface.
“After examining the data, I think it’s a dead ringer for the MC252 oil, as good a match as I’ve seen,” Overton wrote in an email to the newspaper. “My guess is that it is probably coming from the broken riser pipe or sunken platform. ... However, it should be confirmed, just to make sure there is no leak from the plugged well.”
Bob Bea, one of the investigators of the BP spill reports that the observed oil is not normal or natural.
“Based on my experience in working and boating in this area, the amount of oil I have seen on the surface from recent photographs and videos is not normal,” wrote Bob Bea, a engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, in an e-mail. He organized an independent investigation of the spill that reported its findings to Congress.
And now an interview with Steven Chu by Think Progress shows that the Obama administration apparently intends to approve the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.