A new fellowship program organized by Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and Tulane University’s ByWater Institute aims to bolster disaster response efforts in Louisiana’s coastal parishes.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was not only the largest ecological disaster in the U.S., but it has become the most scientifically researched oil spill. Six years since the disaster, researchers from various fields have gathered data on the environmental, economic and health impacts.
Patches of marsh grass that had a 90 percent or greater coating of oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster suffered dramatic erosion rates during the two years after the 2010 well blowout, according to a new study. These marshes “didn’t recover; they’re now gone, having been converted to mudflats,” one of the lead scientists said.
It has been six years since the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Plants and animals were harmed and the places they call home destroyed. The money brought in by fisheries and tourism was cut. A way of life was tarnished.
A team of marine scientists, led by representatives of the University of South Florida, are about midway through a six-week expedition looking for evidence left over from the two largest accidental oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.
In mangroves behind Vizcaya, plastic bottles, tampon applicators and bits of styrofoam regularly get trapped in the tangle of roots as if captured in a storm drain. Out the mouth of the Miami River and across Biscayne Bay on Miami Beach, stormwater flushes human and animal wastes and an array of foul stuff. On Virginia Key, a vial of blood sticks out of the sand.
USF Researchers Prep for Unprecedented Gulf Trip
Team will board the R/V Weatherbird II for the longest research cruise to date in a six-year plan to fully understand 2010 and 1979 oil spills
Study on mahi-mahi embryos and larvae shows toxic oil affects developing heart, eye and neurological function
Scientists working in the Gulf of Mexico have found that contaminants from the massive 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill lingered in the subsurface water for months after oil on the surface had been swept up or dispersed.