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Louisiana school sells their children's minds to BP for $23,000. The original disgraceful propaganda "science" presentation took place on September 22 but new information indicates BP made a donation to the school and the science teacher has a financial interest in staying in BP's good graces.
School officials justify the brainwashing on the basis of the fact that the science presentation was pitched by a local PR firm representing BP rather from BP directly and that it was not a direct quid pro quo even though they had received the BP donation less than two months before evil deed.
School officials said they received no money for the event and denied any link between it and a $23,000 BP donation to the school system in June.
The event’s organizers say the presentation was done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, not BP, and it was an pitched by a local public-relations firm rather than BP’s corporate office.
It is also apparently just fine and dandy for a science teacher to use her position of authority with her students to promote hubby's PR business representing BP.
Charles Gaiennie, founder and CEO of a Thibodaux-based public relations firm that has been working for BP after the spill, said the idea for the demonstration was his, not BP’s.
Gaiennie, who said he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of BP, sees nothing wrong with the Oaklawn presentation. But Gaiennie, whose wife is the eighth-grade science teacher at Oaklawn, did take responsibility for three “missteps that created undue concern.”
In the initial episode Gary Ott from NOAA trashed skimming and booming in favor of using toxic dispersants as well as telling the children that the seafood was safe to eat.
The Houma Courier quoted NOAA science support coordinator Gary Ott as telling the children, “Oil floats. See, we’ve tested it.” (The oil-floats argument is also what then-BP CEO Tony Hayward said when first confronted with evidence of underwater oil plumes this summer.)
According to the two reports, Ott had the children try to use eyedroppers to suck up the oil, simulating the inefficiency of skimmers. He had them use paper towels to simulate absorbent booms.
And then he applied dishwashing detergent to the floating oil to break it down — simulating dispersants. Though he acknowledged the dispersed oil doesn’t disappear and could hurt some fish species, Ott told the children that the chemicals were broken down within weeks by microbes, the Courier reported. He also assured the children that Gulf seafood was safe to eat.
An LSU scientist in recent Houma Courier article linked above calls out Ott's propaganda. Also claims of seafood safety should be taken with a mine full of salt since seafood testing procedures are not yet fully transparent and the government has demonstrated a new level of creativity in not finding oil that world class researchers have found easily.
Richard Condrey, an associate professor at LSU’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, specializes in coastal ecology and fishery management. He said he has seen no comprehensive study that supports Ott’s claims that oil-eating microbes would break down the dispersed oil in weeks.
“Basic physiology suggests that dispersed oil will negatively impact the reproductive capabilities of a wide variety of animals,” he said, and could result in a “tipping point beyond which recovery is uncertain.”
Ott must have concluded that his "science" presentation might have come up short in the brainwashing department so the original story tells how he goes on to do some highly deceptive cheerleading for BP.
After assisting Ott with the demonstration, Jaycie [student] asked why people had blamed BP for the spill.
"When you have a spill and it's going on day after day and you think it's going to affect your life and your ability to fish and have a job, you feel helpless and you get angry," Ott responded. "That's what people do when they feel helpless, and who are they going to blame? They're going to blame someone. So, one company that stood up was BP because they had interest in that well, and they took the heat."
The BP rep at the school who appeared with Ott felt compelled to hand out BP advertising to the students to top off the propaganda exercise. I wonder if any answers deemed to be unfriendly to BP were counted as correct.
During one demonstration, reported the Tri-Parish Times, a BP representative asked the students questions about the oil spill. Students who answered correctly received a BP hat or pen as a prize.
None of the parents complained to the school about BP propaganda being spoon-fed to their children and BP plans many more similar presentations in areas in the Gulf area.
There is also more on whether Gary Ott is actually currently working for NOAA (No Oil At All). If not, why haven't any newspaper articles noted this and what was NOAA's official role in organizing the school event. Being curious as to what type of fool scientist would pull a stunt like Ott inspired me to do a little Googling. The Linked In entry for Gary Ott indicates that Ott is a private contractor not currently working for NOAA. Also, it looks as if Ott only works with scientists and isn't one himself. Googling "Gary Ott NOAA cv" or "Gary Ott NOAA curriculum vitae" doesn't turn up scientific work or publications.
Gary Ott
Environmental Services - Consultant and Contractor
Past - NOAA Science Support Coordinator at United States Coast Guard
Education - New York University
The first page of this International Oil Spill Conference report, co-authored by Gary Ott, was last modified Feb 11, 2009 9:05 PM (PDF document info) and indicates Ott is retired from NOAA.
Gary Ott NOAA Scientific Support Coordinator (retired) Yorktown, VA 23692
Searching on the NOAA site for "Gary Ott" didn't turn up any document dated later than April 14, 2008.
If Ott is no longer employed by NOAA it makes one wonder why NOAA allows a prior employee who is now a contractor for sale to the highest bidder to represent himself as currently working for NOAA. If the toobz is wrong and Ott is on NOAA's payroll currently he should be fired immediately for using taxpayer money to act as a PR flak for BP.
More than 100 ideas that came in from citizens about spill response were tried. There were no monumental breakthroughs but there were some significant incremental improvements. In the past, money for improved oil spill response has dried up as soon as the spill falls out of the headlines.
That's typical for the oil spill response industry, which has long been starved for research funding. Federal funding for oil spill response research was cut in half between 1993 and 2008, falling to $7.7 million in fiscal year 2008, data from the Congressional Research Service show. That occurred despite calls for more research after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 — the most notorious U.S. oil spill before BP's.
"We were still using the same techniques on the BP spill as we did with the Exxon Valdez," says Bob Deans of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "That's what angered people."
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Smith's company, the Massachusetts-based Cellect Technologies, makes a foam, Opflex, that repels water but absorbs oil. Previously used in the medical, construction and other fields, Smith brought it to the Gulf and "spent days living with fishermen" trying to get his foam into the water.
All sorbent-boom manufacturers claim that their products repel water. But sooner or later, they don't, Kinnaird says. BP's tests found that Opflex went weeks without absorbing water. When oiled, it could be wrung out and reused. It's also biodegradable, Kinnaird [BP project manager who helped coordinate BP's response from a Louisiana command center] says. Traditional absorbent boom often ends up in landfills as hazardous waste.
"This was completely different from anything I'd seen," Kinnaird says. Through the spill, BP bought 2 million square feet of Opflex, which can be in pads, pompoms and sausage-like boom. Overall, more than 11 million feet of boom was deployed in the spill.
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Greg Huntsman and Tim Pedigo, two Missouri real estate developers, had spent 18 months "sitting on our hands," Huntsman says, as their business withered with the recession. Then the oil started spewing, and a global nightmare — and moment of opportunity — arose.
Pedigo called a distant relative (his nephew's wife's dad) who sold boom to sop up oil. The partners headed to the Gulf "following the money," Huntsman says.
After watching cleanup crews spray oil off boom stacked on slippery wooden pallets, Pedigo thought: "I can automate this."
He sketched the design for the Boom Blaster, a car-wash-like contraption to clean boom, a task typically done by hand with hoses. Two childhood buddies, who own a car wash manufacturing plant in Missouri, built it.
The blaster cleaned six times as much boom per person than if the work were done by hand, BP says. "It was kind of a cocktail napkin sketch," Pedigo says.
Lee Dragna, 37, sketched his idea for a supersize skimmer, The Big Gulp, while in a La-Z-Boy recliner watching TV. "I kept thinking, 'It can't be this easy,' " says Dragna, who's president of barge builder Lad Services in Morgan City, La.
Dragna attached skimmers to the front of a barge to suck in oil and water. He tested a prototype in his pool. BP says the football-field-size skimmer collected 10 times more oil a day than many smaller and conventional skimmers.
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Mike Halloran, 46, who sold lawn-mowing equipment in Chicago, watched the spill on TV and recalled a contraption used to clean beaches in Spain. He tracked down the device and hit the road for the Gulf, planning to attach it to a two-wheel, self-propelled tractor made by lawn-mower company Gravely.
"We can have a snow blower on the front one day, clean a parking lot with a sweeper the next and then clean tar balls off the beach," Halloran says.
The beach cleaner lifts the sand and shakes it. Clean sand falls to the beach through a screen. A hopper traps bigger tar balls. The machine cleans a half-acre beach in 60 minutes vs. four hours for a 10-person crew with shovels and bags — the most-often-used beach-cleaning method, Halloran says. BP put 10 of the machines to work and found it good for use in small areas.
Alaska seeks summary judgement for $1.7 million BP fine for pipeline spill. This is BP pocket change but it is just part of $1 billion Alaska is seeking from BP. - h/t rubyr
The requested civil fine is only a small part of the overall bundle of claims the state is pursuing against BP’s local subsidiary, BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., in connection with the crude spill discovered on March 2, 2006.
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The state case is believed to pose the biggest threat to BP, as the state is seeking not only the statutory penalty for the spilled oil but also compensatory and punitive damages plus back taxes and royalties. State lawyers contend that BP’s negligence led to emergency field shut-ins and pipeline replacements, costing the state revenue on an estimated production shortfall of 35 million barrels of crude oil and natural gas liquids.
The state’s damages could exceed $1 billion, a state lawyer has said.
UCSB oil expert says cutbacks, shortcuts led to disastrous BP oil spill Freudenburg is also co-author of the recently published, Blowout in the Gulf –– The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America. - h/t rubyr
Freudenburg talked not only about last April’s Deepwater Horizon tragedy, but many of the major disasters that have happened over the last several decades.
The BP disaster was used as a kick-off point, being the most recent and the biggest oil spill in history.
“There were a series of cutbacks that posed cost against safety,” said Freudenburg, pointing out a series of newspaper headlines that down-played the cost/safety tradeoff in relation to the BP spill.
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Freudenburg detailed a chilling history of the oil industry’s repeated failures to update equipment and provide adequate safety measures, drawing examples from spills like the Exxon-Valdez wreck in 1989, as well as on-shore disasters like 2005’s Texas City Refinery explosion, which killed 15 people and injured well over a hundred more.
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“We’ve used up all the oil that was easy to get, and we’re acting like we haven’t,” said Freudenburg. “You can be the most eloquent politician in the world, but you can’t negotiate with geology.”
Natural Resources Defense Council reminds us of the serious problems Gulf residents still face. NRDC continues to do an excellent job of putting this environmental calamity in context of human lives. Gulf residents are suffering and their legitimate concerns and questions are not being addressed.
Down in the Louisiana bayou, the fall season is changing with the north winds. Millions of ducks, geese and migratory birds are arriving as they have throughout the millennia. Shrimp are slowly abandoning the nourishing coastal marshes as cooler water pushes them out to sea.
On the surface, life appears normal. But all is far from normal more than six months after the worst maritime oil spill in history. Many residents here are in a fight for their lives. Things have not changed much for them since that fateful day on April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon blew a fireball of oil and gas into the air, killing 11 men and creating 87-day gusher of undersea oil that captured the world’s attention.
Now the press is gone and the world has moved on. But fishermen and businesses in the Gulf are struggling. Demand for once-prized Gulf shrimp and crab is as low as a brown pelican skimming the sea searching for its next meal. The American public isn’t buying the PR campaigns or government claims that the seafood is safe. Fishermen are are having a hard time paying their bills after the most disastrous season since Katrina.
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Complaints over claims payments isn’t the only gut-wrenching problem for residents down here. Many look out into the choppy Gulf waters and wonder what happened to the 200 million gallons of oil spewed into the sea. Is it largely gone like many government officials are saying? Could hydrocarbon-eating bacteria really be that ravenous? But many think much of the crude is still there, lurking on the bottom and rolling in with the tides. Science has yet to provide the answer and likely won’t for many months to come.
Mistrust among residents and fishermen continues to rage.
“I call it the immaculate deception,” says Louisiana Shrimp Association President Clint Guidry. “Nothing’s really changed here since the beginning as far as getting real information.”
Reduced oyster season will open despite controversy over the wisdom of having any season at all.
The availability of marketable Louisiana oysters has already been diminished by natural and man-made factors, including the BP oil spill. Still, many in the oyster industry wanted the public season closed, fearing that oyster dredging now would destroy young "spat" oysters that will eventually be used to replenish the resource in public waters and in private lease areas that are harvested year round.
Yet another story illustrating how truly difficult it is to remediate oil damage to the environment.
During a boat tour of Pensacola Bay and Perdido Key on Sunday, Joe Waller, BP's Pensacola division supervisor for oil spill cleanup, said cleanup contractors are facing new challenges while determining how best to collect deposits of oil and tar that were found submerged at Pensacola Pass near Fort McRee last month.
The previously undiscovered deposits are believed to be the source of about 17,000 pounds of oil a month that continues to wash ashore on beaches at Pensacola Naval Air Station, BP officials said.
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To minimize environmental damage, the current plan is for commercial divers to collect the oil by hand using special mesh bags that allow water to drain but contain most of the oil and tar.
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In the meantime, a five-person dive team is charting the location of the submerged tar mats, and cleanup crews are collecting the oil that washes ashore on Pensacola NAS beaches.
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The situation is slightly better in Perdido Key, where buried oil has not been found more than 18 inches deep, said Bret Posner, task force supervisor for beach cleanup from the Florida-Alabama line to Johnson Beach.
On Pensacola Beach, oil has been found as deep as 30 inches, Posner said.
BP is $3.4 million short in reimbursing Louisiana's Jefferson parish. I wonder how much interest deadbeat BP is collecting for their miles long list of unpaid bills.
Paul Rivera, the Sheriff's Office internal auditor, indicated that the outstanding balance could push to $4 million after officials calculate the latest round of bills.
Finance Director Gwen Bolotte said the oil spill has cost Jefferson Parish on average $46,000 a day.
"We're tired of getting the runaround in terms of getting reimbursement, so we're going to use any leverage we can," Parish President John Young said last week.
Young traveled to Baton Rouge last Tuesday to strike an accord with Gov. Bobby Jindal and other parish presidents to keep pressure on BP. Young said he would not agree to any plan that would let the company pull out of the area without meeting specific criteria: reimbursement, removing boom anchors and a visit from the lawyer assigned by President Barack Obama's administration to dole out compensation to businesses and residents financially hurt by the oil disaster.
Young acknowledged he had little recourse should BP decide to leave before local officials are satisfied with its response to the disaster.
NOAA (No Oil At All) opens more waters to fishing. NOAA wouldn't find oil in a refinery so I'm leaving the champagne corked. They are only testing for a single chemical, DOSS, used in dispersants.
It was the 11th such opening since July 22. NOAA said 99.6 percent of federal waters in the Gulf were now open to fishing. Only an area covering 1,041 square miles immediately around the ruptured Macondo wellhead remains closed.
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NOAA said in a statement that no oil or sheen had been detected in the area reopened on Monday since July 25. Tests were also conducted to see if dispersants used to break up the oil had made their way dangerously into the marine food chain.
The ridiculous presidential commission finding that BP did not sacrifice safety for money is not likely to influence legal cases.
Bill Rosch, a Houston lawyer who has defended companies in criminal environmental cases, agrees that the findings in hearings so far will have little to do with any criminal charges the might arise out of the spill.
"I think it's typical in these cases that are dealing with larger issues, like Enron or Exxon Valdez, where you have these earlier public hearings that ultimately don't mean a hill of beans when it comes to what the criminal prosecutors think," Rosch said.
Given the intensity of the media coverage of the spill and its aftermath, the many hearings and volumes of documents already widely disseminated, the public may think it's heard all there is to know about the accident and its causes. This creates impatience, wondering why people aren't already in jail or at least going to trial.
"Traditionally these are very slow investigations," Rosch said. "They'll start with the roustabouts, work their way up very methodically. Howard Stewart (the lead prosecutor) will not try to put a house together on a flimsy foundation."
Uhlmann [the former head of the department's environmental crimes unit, who now teaches law at the University of Michigan] speculated that the Justice Department has already decided whether to move forward with criminal charges against BP and Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon, and will decide soon on whether to include Halliburton.
Whether or not BP was grossly negligent, and thus liable for the stiffest of financial penalties under the Clean Water Act, will depend on whether prosecutors believe they can prove the decisions involving the Macondo well departed significantly from the industry norms.
...
How about criminal charges against individuals?
"That remains the toughest question from my perspective," said Uhlmann. "If all they can do is find direct culpability on the rig and can't reach shoreside management, that would be a tough call. They will be reluctant to place individual blame on a lower-level employee who had no role in shaping a corporate culture."
Spill panel eyes creation of new industry safety body h/t rubyr
The leaders of the presidential panel investigating the BP oil spill are calling for creation of a new, industry-backed body to help ensure offshore oil-and-gas drilling safety.
William Reilly — co-chair of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling — said the Interior Department probably won't ever have enough money to oversee offshore rigs alone.
BOP testing began yesterday. Investigators did not say how long the testing would take but previously indicated it would take about 60 days.
Alabama's Governor Riley wants to spend NRDA money on a convention center instead of environmental restoration This serves as a reminder, in case anyone has forgotten, that Republicans are flat-out hostile to environmental health. They also seem to think obeying the law doesn't apply to them.
Gov. Bob Riley has expressed concern that Alabama could get shortchanged in the joint multi-state and federal NRDA process if recovery projects are limited to environmental damage. He has suggested that the state could instead conduct its own assessment, then negotiate directly with the responsible parties.
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NOAA officials noted that the section of the law authorizing recovery projects makes no mention of economic restoration, saying only that officials "shall develop and implement a plan for the restoration, rehabilitation, replacement, or acquisition of the equivalent, of the natural resources."
Tony Penn, deputy chief of NOAA’s assessment and restoration division, said the closest thing to economic recovery that NRDA money is used for is increasing public access to natural resources: fishing piers, boat ramps and the like.
Penn said the program would likely not cover the construction of a convention center, an idea that Riley has championed.
Some Gulf Spill Claimants Waiting for Months: Feinberg Blames Tricky Policy Decisions - h/t rubyr
Since Gulf spill claims czar Kenneth Feinberg took over from BP in late August, many claimants have reported that their applications have remained under review for months and that they have not yet received decisions.
Roughly 71,000 claims are currently under review, according to statistics from Feinberg's operation (PDF). Feinberg's program does not provide statistics on how long claimants have been waiting. But ProPublica and the Washington Independent have both spoken to numerous claimants who say their applications have been in limbo for over a month.
The Mobile Press Register is doing a series on oil spill victims' damage claims and their outlook for future business.
Atkins [seafood supplier] filed a six-month claim and said he received a "small quantity of money the other day, no where near what it should be." He did express sympathy for the enormity of the task being taken on by Ken Feinberg's Gulf Coast Claims Facility. "They are swamped. With every Tom, Dick and Harry filing a claim, it's tying up the system. I think that's the problem, as much as anything else. Mr. Feinberg was talking about paying us for six months, then over in Pensacola he started talking about three years, and nothing since then. You hear so many different versions," he said.
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Bosarge [embroidery business owner] said Ken Feinberg and the Gulf Coast Claims Facility "came through," sending a check to her and her husband, Dennis, for what they were owed in lost income. "I'm glad it's over," she said.
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"We did get a six-month emergency payment and that's been helpful," Lee [owns a furniture as well as a scooter rental business] said. He said, however, that he got conflicting information about his claim. "I got a call Sept. 30 saying that they were going to pay my claim," Lee said. "I went online that day after the call and it said the claim was denied." Lee said he continued to check the status of his claim online and each time his claim was denied. He called back several times to double-check what he was originally told, and each time he was told his claim was denied. In the end, a claims representative confirmed that the claim would be paid.
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I would say things are worse," said Paul Mueller [owns a combination restaurant and docking facility], who has been fairly critical of the process throughout. At the first public meetings with claims czar Ken Feinberg, it sounded like claims would go to a month-by-month basis after emergency payments, but now the push is for final claims, he said. He estimated his six-month claim is between $50,000 and $150,000 short.
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Billy's Seafood received a claims check, which has helped, but Parks was unsure how much of his business loss the check was meant to cover. "It seemed to be right on if it's for three months, but if it's for six months, it's way off," he said.
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He's still awaiting a payment from the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, though he filed a claim Aug. 23. He has been told his claim is in "Phase 4," the final stage, and that he is "payment eligible." But day after day, he said, he gets no straight answer about why his claim has yet to be paid. "I really don't know what to do," Roberts [owns a mobile seafood business] said.
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Sheffield [bait and seafood shop owner] said he had no problems with the way BP PLC handled his claims and added that, after a brief delay during the transition, he has no complaints about claims czar Ken Feinberg, either. He said he received his six-month advance payment and awaits a final settlement offer, which he estimated will come in early spring.
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Walker-Gordon [unemployed] said she received a check the first week of October for the amount she requested. "They reimbursed me for what I would have made had I been able to work," Walker-Gordon said.
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Waller [charter fishing boat owner] filed two claims under Ken Feinberg's process, a personal claim as an employee of his business and a business claim as the owner. He has received six months' worth of his salary - he declined to give a figure - through the personal claim. And he has received a larger business claim to cover his expenses. He said he received one check and thought it was too small. A few weeks later, he received a letter saying the claims office had made a mistake, and he got two more checks. He would not disclose the amount, but he said he thinks it might be enough to make up for his business losses.
==== ROV Feeds =====
20876/21507 - Development Driller II's ROV 1
32900/49178 - Development Driller II's ROV 2
39168/39169 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 1
40492/40493 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 2
58406/21750 - Iron Horse ROV 1 (Original feed which is still active)
If Iron Horse won't load in VLC or Quicktime with the above link try this one.
23211/23803 - Iron Horse ROV 1 (New feed designations)
22070/22936 - Iron Horse ROV 2 (New feed designations)
24301/24309 - West Sirius' ROV 1 (New feed)
They cemented the still leaky Macondo well and put on a memorial cap in the wee hours of November 8. The Marine Traffic site hasn't had any type of accurate information around the Macondo site since they pulled the BOP so we don't know what skimmers and support ships may have been on site. Feeds have been up for pulling and deploying equipment since the well was capped.
==Multiple stream feeds (hard on browser/bandwidth)==
German multiple feed site that updates once a minute—Does not crash browsers and loads really fast.
Belgian multi-feed site, Mozaiek Webcam – BP Olielek Olieramp Deepwater Horizon
BP videos All the available directly feeds from BP.
Bobo's lightweight ROV Multi-feed: is the only additional up to date multiple feed site.
See this thread for more info on using video feeds and on linking to video feeds.
PLEASE visit Pam LaPier's diary to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
Previous Gulf Watcher diaries:
Gulf Watchers Monday - Afternoon Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #426 - shanesnana
Gulf Watchers Sunday - Bickering Delayed Testing of BOP - BP Catastrophe AUV #425 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Friday - The More Things Change... - BP Catastrophe AUV #424 - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Wednesday - Commission Takes a Dive for BP & Big Oil - BP Catastrophe AUV #423 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Oil Spill Hearings - Liveblog - Phil S 33
Gulf Watchers Monday - Finale or beginning of Fireworks - BP Catastrophe AUV #422 - shanesnana
The last Mothership has links to reference material.
Previous motherships and ROV's from this extensive live blog effort may be found here.
Again, to keep bandwidth down, please do not post images or videos.