Author's Note: There is nothing new in this diary. I write this because, while many of us watch and comment on the car wreck that is BP's oil volcano, it behooves us to remember the effects of what we will all witness in the decades to come.
This diary contains no links to video feeds, no fascinating images of sexy technology. We've been focused on this to the detriment of the real story: the long lasting biological effects that Gulf Coast residents will have to live with the rest of their lives. If you want to find those links, they're here. (Leave a rec there, please.)
The material I choose here is largely taken from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and papers by Dr. Jeffrey Short. Any errors or misinterpretations are my fault, and corrections are welcome.
Please donate a rec and help keep the BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog Mothership up. It costs nothing and if you don't do it, who will?
PLEASE visit Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier's diaries 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!
Shipping had been the preferred mode of transporting bulk goods up and down New England coasts from colonial days until the nineteenth century. From Maine to Boston, around Cape Cod to Rhode Island, Connecticut and the port of New York, coastal ship constantly plied these waters. The Asian artifacts enshrined in the Peabody Essex Museum may be a tribute to the global reach of new England merchant mariners, but they are an anomaly - the vast bulk of New England shipping took place in this inter-coastal trade. A shortcut which avoided the treacherous sand-bar and ledge filled waters of the outer cape was begun in 1909, The Cape Cod Canal. Today, the barge traffic still endures - consisting mostly of oil barges - sailing the route up Buzzards Bay to reach the canal, northward to Cape Cod Bay and beyond.
During the national international environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, it is useful to revisit the spill from oil barge Florida which grounded and broke up in Buzzards Bay on September 16, 1969. Perhaps the longest and best researched coastal oil spill in history, in which 175,000 gallons of #2 fuel oil (diesel or home heating oil) spilled into the confines of Buzzards Bay, quickly reaching a salt marsh in West Falmouth.
Like experiencing a heart attack while visiting a hospital, if an oil spill can have a silver lining, it is this: the Wild Harbor salt marsh sits right in the back yard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). As oil barges carry petroleum products up and down Buzzards Bay, the route to the southern end of the Cape Cod Canal a number of significant spills, ranging from 50 gallons of #6 fuel oil to the massive FLORIDA oil spill, and scientists from WHOI have studied the short and long term effects of extensive oil pollution on salt marsh ecology.
First let me say this: the oil from the 1969 spill is still there. If you find one of the right spots, just dig down 6 inches and there it is, and yes, it still adversely affects the wildlife struggling to cope.
Still Toxic After All These Years
The above link is actually a title of an excellent article describing some of the studies undertaken in the last few years, to map the oil penetration into the marsh, to measure the quantity, to document any remaining effects on the wildlife (which, it turns out, can be significant), and to determine the extent to which microbes can dispose of oil, as is often claimed (I've heard an official mention this claim in the past week).
There Will Always Be Residue
Thus far, unspoken recognition that there is little we can do about it conventional wisdom has it that there are three methods by which nature will take care of spilled oil: microbial ingestion, the action of sunlight on oil, and evaporation.
Petroleum is an incredibly varied and complex substance. BP's crude oil geyser, a mixture of raw petroleum and gases must be an unimaginably complex soup of hydrocarbons - the semi-refined #2 fuel oil spilled in Buzzards Bay contained lots of identified compounds. Microbes evidently dispose of only part of this mixture, and then moves back to their usual diet. This process and evaporation are the only ways to reduce, to "weather" spilled oil, and it's a woefully incomplete solution.
Today, that oil from the 1969 spill remains there a few inches below the surface, and it is still toxic. One study, published in 2007, notes that the amount of oil is just about the same as it was when last surveyed 37 years ago in 1973, and is only moderately weathered. Jennifer Culbertson's findings indicate significant effects in growth and activity of several species trying to live in the polluted marsh. In particular, are her findings that fiddler crabs, which burrow into the marsh to escape predators, stop burrowing down when they hit the layer of oil, turn sideways and begin burrowing back to the surface only a few inches below the surface.
After 40 years, the oil in the Wild Harbor marsh is still there, and still toxic. But let's move on.
A Quick Primer on Oil Spill Response Options
The above is a link to a paper by Dr. Jeffrey Short, and well worth the read. Dr. Short conducted the definitive study of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The excerpts I present here require no elaboration on my part.
On Undersea Oil Plumes and Dispersants:
Droplets at these sizes no longer respond to buoyancy forces because the viscosity of water is sufficient to resist rapid movement, so the microdroplets remain entrained near the depths of their creation and are dispersed by mid-water currents. This would create a column of relatively toxic water from the dissolved components, but its extent would be limited by the accelerated rate of microbial decomposition. For example, microbial decomposition of PAH dissolved from the oil would occur within about a week, and the very high S/V [Surface to Volume ratio] of the microdroplets would accelerate microbial colonization of the oil surface. These processes could turn most of the oil into carbon dioxide and water within a few weeks, and the remaining material would be nearly inert biologically. This capacity to neutralize most of the oil relatively quickly, while confining the toxic effects to a relatively small volume of water is a major advantage of dispersants.
Reading this stopped me short on the question of dispersants. It still remains a question, and one that absolutely needs to be continually monitored, but for the time being, I'm withholding final judgement.
The Deep Water Dispersant Hazard:
Another hazard of dispersant application arises from the microdroplets formed when they’re effective. These microdroplets are efficiently accumulated by suspension feeders such as clams, barnacles, some kinds of zooplankton, and deepwater corals. Zooplankton may ingest oil droplets which become mixed with inorganic material from other prey and ejected as oily fecal pellets that sink to the seafloor, where they may be scavenged by deepwater corals. These corals are abundant in the vicinity of the Deepwater Horizon, and the effects of oil microdroplets or of oily fecal pellets derived from them on these corals is not at all well known. This is probably the most serious threat associated with wellhead application of dispersants.
Elsewhere, Dr. Short notes that after a huge effort, only about 8% of the spilled oil was ever recovered from the shores and waters of Prince William Sound.
Written Testimony of Dr. Jeffrey Short, 24 March 2009
About 20% [of spilled oil from the Exxon Valdez] evaporated, 50% contaminated beaches, and the rest floated out to the North Pacific Ocean, where it formed tarballs that eventually stranded elsewhere or sank to the seafloor.
Again, we see the long term effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill:
Long-term monitoring led to numerous insights regarding the ways that oil pollution impacts ecosystems. Field observations led to our discovery that the toxic components of oil are deleterious to embryonic development of salmon at concentrations in the parts per billion, over 100-fold lower than had previously been considered dangerous. This finding suggests that oil pollution from non-point sources everywhere could pose a much greater threat to fish habitat than previously recognized. Furthermore, the initial mass mortalities of wildlife that died from contact with oil had destabilizing effects on ecosystem function. For example, prey populations exploded following removal of their predators and rockweed removal in the intertidal areas deprived animals of the protective cover needed to avoid dehydration or predation. It took more than a decade for some areas to recover from these destabilizing effects, and recovery is still in progress in some of the hardest hit places. Another long-term impact came from pockets of oil beneath some beaches that were surprisingly resistant to natural degradation. These pockets retained most of their toxic components for more than a decade, occasionally re-contaminating sea otters and sea ducks that forage in the intertidal areas in search of clams, worms and other prey found there. This chronic re-exposure is likely a substantial if not primary reason why populations of sea otters and birds in the areas hardest hit by oil are only now recovering.
(emphasis mine)
Atlantic Bluefin Tuna spawn in the Gulf, and a generation of tuna is at risk. Shrimp, oysters and other filter feeders are at risk. As noted by Dr. Samantha Joye on the Rachel Maddow Show last night, oxygen levels in the midwater plumes USF reseachers have investigated are in some areas approaching levels where higher order species will begin to feel stressed. BP's contention that undersea plumes don't exist was definitively and officially debunked. (BP caught in a lie? Would BP serve themselves better by just shutting the hell up, or not?)
The North Atlantic Phytoplankton Bloom:
Another concern. About half of the world's photosynthesis takes place in massive phytoplankton blooms in the world's oceans - that's half the world's oxygen that we breathe and half the world's carbon dioxide sequestration. The spring and summer phytoplankton blooms (yes, plural) are responsible for a significant portion of global photosynthesis activity, and form the base of oceanic food chains. The blooms are so massive that they can only be properly appreciated by viewing them from space:
If BP's toxic release rides the loop current into the Gulf Stream and reaches these waters . . . at the very least this calls for an international mobilization to gear up and monitor this.
Peace.
An Important Afterword On Flow Rates:
Recently, I've heard and read several flow rate estimates from pressers, the blogs, and the MSM. All of which have been slightly wrong.
Steven Wereley of Purdue (mechanical engineering) is on the government's team trying to determine the flow rate. Monday morning, he was on CNBC and may have said that the 12,000-25,000 bbl/day estimate is a range of lowest estimates:
Erin Burnett: How much do you think is leaking?
Steven Wereley: I wouldn't agree with the statement that nobody has any idea how much is coming out now. Thad Allen established, about two weeks ago, the flow rate technical group. You mentioned that I'm a member of that group, and our mission is to determine how much is coming out of the pipe.
Burnett: So how much is? If you say that people know, tell us.
Wereley: We're in a preliminary stage right now, and what we've said is that the flow is between twelve and nineteen thousand barrels per day. But there's a caveat to that, and that is that the particular sub-team that I'm on, which is the group which is the group that's looking at the oil flow out of the pipe, they have the videos that America has been watching of the oil flow out of the end of the riser, that that is a minimum of twelve to twenty five thousand barrels per day, so it could potentially be considerably higher than that.
Burnett: It is a wide range, though.
Wereley: That's correct.
Burnett: I mean, and I'm not trying to be negative but that's a big difference between twelve versus twenty five in terms of how much is really coming out. I guess that leaves the question of BP and the Coast Guard seem to be in general agreement right now about how much is being effectively capped, at about eleven thousand barrels a day. Would you agree with that? Because if it's eleven thousand a day being capped, and your low end of how much is coming out is twelve thousand, and that's right, then we've fixed the problem!
(emphasis mine)
A few things here. Professor Wereley seems to have said that the estimate of flow of 12 to 25 thousand barrels per day is a range of minimum values. Perhaps he misspoke - there's some ambiguity there - but those are his words.
Erin Burnett is no dummy, however, she seems to have missed this point, and she goes on (assuming?) that no more oil was coming out of that pipe than 25k bbl/day, which is not exactly what Professor Wereley said. This has also been my understanding: 12k bbl/day - 19k bbl/day was the entire lower-model range and that 12k bbl/day - 25k bbl/day was the entire upper-model range of oil flow.
Thad Allen seems to get this wrong as well. His White house presser with Robert Gibbs seems to confirm my original understanding and to contradict the statement above made by Professor Wereley:
"ADMIRAL ALLEN: Let me give two answers to that, and I think we’re going to have to get more fidelity on this as we get the actual flow rate established. We have two models for a flow out of the wellhead that were done by our Flow Rate Technical Group under Marcia McNutt of the U.S. Geological Survey. One was a range of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day. The other one was a range of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day. We are now approaching production that will get up around 15,000 barrels a day.
I think once we know the production flow and we’re able to seal off the vents and then assess the leakage around the seal, we will have a hard, fast number that will tell us where within that range that flow rate lies, and allow us to kind of, I would say, narrow the range from the outside and get greater fidelity. Once we do that, then we can actually back that in for the number of days this spill has been ongoing, and get a better overall estimate of the overall amount of oil that's been spilled.
I call it -- it’s kind of like an oil budget -- how much is coming out, how much have we skimmed, how much have we burned, and then -- so we can account for where all the hydrocarbons went. And that's a work in progress right now. We’ll be able to give you a much finer estimate once we establish the flow rate."
Finally I hunted down some definitive language, and it would appear that my new understanding, based on Steven Wereley's remarks is the accurate one. From the Deepwater Horizon Response website:
"the Plume Modeling Team has provided an initial lower bound estimate of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels of oil per day"
(emphasis mine)
It would appear that the upper end of flow has yet to be defined, and the problem as defined in the MSM hasn't yet twigged to the fact that this disaster is perhaps (or likely) bigger than they've been reporting, and bigger than Thad Allen has been claiming.
UPDATE: As I wrap this diary up, Chris Matthews interviewed Ed Overton, environmental science professor at Louisiana State University, and Phillipe Cousteau:
Chris Matthews: Ok, ten years from now, what percent of the oil that has leaked, or will leak, will still be there?
Ed Overton: Way, way less than one percent, it'll be remediated pretty quickly. A lot of it, hopefully, will get cleaned up before it gets on shoreline. Only that which is way down in the anaerobic zone will last very long.
In gross measures, this may be true - 99% of the mass of oil may evaporate or be digested by microbes. It's estimated that only about 100 kg of the FLORIDA spill in 1969 still remained in Wild Harbor marsh by 1973, but this figure matches the findings from the 2002 survey. My point being, that even in an environment favorable to bio-degradation, those toxins aren't going anywhere in the lifetimes of anyone on earth right now. The amount of oil in Wild harbor Marsh hasn't changed in Wild Harbor Marsh in 37 years.