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Updated Daily Situation NOAAThis is from the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration: "NOAA Assists Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Efforts - Updated Daily" The NOAA Office of Response and Restoration provides daily updates. Here are some example quotes from the June 2010 updates. This is a quote from the June 23 2010 update:
Sea Turtles and Marine Mammals (effective June 22, 2010) A total of 535 sea turtles have been verified from April 30 to June 22 within the designated spill area from the Texas/Louisiana border to Apalachicola, Florida. Between Monday, June 21, and Tuesday, June 22, 8 turtle strandings were verified (One live turtle from Florida and four dead from Florida, three dead turtles from Mississippi). There are now 117 sea turtles in rehabilitation centers. These include 83 sea turtles captured as part of on-water survey and rescue operations, and 34 turtles that stranded alive. A total of 92 stranded or captured turtles have had visible evidence of external oil since verifications began on April 30. These include the 81 captured or collected turtles from on-water operations (75 live turtles, 3 collected dead and 3 found alive that died in rehabilitation), six live stranded turtles (two caught in oil skimming operations), and five dead stranded sea turtles. All others have not had visible evidence of external oil. Of the 535 turtles verified from April 30 to June 22, a total of 403 stranded turtles were found dead, 42 stranded alive. Four of those subsequently died. Four live stranded turtles were released, and 34 live stranded turtles are being cared for at rehabilitation centers. Turtle strandings during this time period have been much higher in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle than in previous years for this same time period. This may be due in part to increased detection and reporting, but this does not fully account for the increase. The NOAA Ship Pisces reported a dead 25-foot sperm whale was located 150 miles due south of Pascagoula, Mississippi and approximately 77 miles due south of the spill site last week. The whale was decomposed and heavily scavenged. Samples of skin and blubber have been taken and will be analyzed. Sperm whales are the only endangered resident cetacean in the Upper Gulf of Mexico. From April 30 to June 22, 50 stranded dolphins have been verified in the designated spill area - no change from June 21. Of the total 50 stranded dolphins, 46 dolphins stranded dead, four dolphins stranded alive and two of those have subsequently died, one on the beach and the other euthanized. The other two include one in rehabilitation at Audubon Aquarium and one freed from between two oil booms. Visible evidence of external oil was confirmed on three dolphins. However, we are unable at this time to determine whether two of the dolphins were externally oiled before or after death. The third dolphin was the one freed from between booms. Since April 30, the stranding rate for dolphins in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle has been higher than the historic numbers for the same time period in previous years. In part, this may be due to increased detection and reporting and the lingering effects of an earlier observed spike in strandings for the winter of 2010. A stranding is defined as a dead or debilitated animal that washes ashore or is found in the water. NOAA and its partners are analyzing the cause of death for the dead stranded and dead captured sea turtles and the stranded marine mammals. This is a quote from the June 15 2010 update:
The collection of oil from the containment cap on the leaking MC 252 well pipe in the Gulf of Mexico was interrupted today when lightning struck the Discovery Enterprise, the drillship where the oil is processed and stored. Following the strike a fire occurred in a vent pipe leading from a storage tank. There was no significant damage to the containment system and collection resumed within 5 hours of the strike. OR&R’s modeling team continues to generate daily trajectories for the nearshore and offshore surface oil. Overflights are also conducted on a daily basis (weather permitting) to provide field verification of model trajectories. The public site, which includes over 400 layers of incident related information, was launched yesterday. In the past 24 hours the site has received over 3.4 million hits. GeoPlatform.gov/gulfresponse employs the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA®) a web-based GIS platform developed by NOAA and the University of New Hampshire’s Coastal Response Research Center. ERMA was designed to facilitate communication and coordination among a variety of users — from federal, state and local responders to local community leaders and the public. The site was designed to be fast and user-friendly, and it will be constantly updated. This is a quote from the June 14 2010 update:
OR&R’s modeling team continues to generate daily trajectories for the nearshore and offshore surface oil. Overflights are also conducted on a daily basis (weather permitting) to provide field verification of model trajectories. GeoPlatform.gov/gulfresponse The public site was launched today. See the article and link at the top of this page. The site employs the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA®) a web-based GIS platform developed by NOAA and the University of New Hampshire’s Coastal Response Research Center. ERMA was designed to facilitate communication and coordination among a variety of users — from federal, state and local responders to local community leaders and the public. The site was designed to be fast and user-friendly, and it will be constantly updated. Here's the link to GeoPlatform.gov/gulfresponse
This is a quote from the June 13 2010 update:
To facilitate the removal of heavy oil that has begun to come ashore in Orange Beach, Alabama, Gulf State Park, Alabama, and Bon Secour, Alabama, the Unified Command has increased skimming and beach cleanup activities and is preparing to move to 24-hour cleanup and skimming operations. More than 400 skimmers are currently deployed to remove an oil-water mix from the Gulf—a more than 300 percent increase over recent days. Area coastlines are being protected by both near-shore and offshore operations. Near-shore skimming vessels were moved from Panama City to Pensacola, Florida. Skimming operations directed by ICP Mobile have collected more than 240,500 gallons of oil-water mix from the Gulf as far out as 50 miles. New skimming equipment, including “Current Buster” skimming systems and a “Big Gulp” weir skimmer, is being deployed offshore. Current Busters can be towed at higher speeds than conventional boom and are ideally suited to high seas and ocean currents. The Big Gulp is a barge that has been converted into a large-capacity skimmer. A task force, or group of vessels including skimmers, is working south of Gulf Shores, Alabama, Perdido Pass, Florida, and Petit Bois Island, Mississippi, among other areas, to boom and skim oil. Night skimming operations will be pursued as weather permits. This is a quote from the Jun 12 2010 update:
BP continues to capture some oil and burn some gas at the surface using its containment dome technique, which is being executed under the federal government’s direction. After cutting off a portion of the riser, BP placed a containment device over it in order to capture oil at its source. This is a quote from the June 11 2010 update: (although they may mean "barrels" not gallons).
Collection of oil and gas leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the MC 252 well seems to have leveled off. The amount of oil being collected via the 'top hat' operation was approximately 15,400 gallons yesterday and about the same the day before. The transfer of crude oil from the drillship to the barge Massachusetts, a process known as lightering, began the morning of June 9. The operation should be complete by tomorrow morning and the barge will transport the oil for discharge at an onshore terminal. Late this month, BP intends increase surface processing capacity by re-plumbing the top hat system so it can be routed to tankers. BP is moving forward with plans to connect risers to ports on the side of the blow out preventer. The risers will be connected to the Q4000 rig used in the top kill procedure. The operation is expected to collect 5,000- 10,000 additional barrels of oil per day which will be burned at the Q4000 rig. BP is also continuing efforts to connect a new free-standing riser to the top hat. The new riser will connect to the containment cap on the well, and will be held in the water by a canister suspended about 300 feet beneath the water's surface. This system should be ready by next month and will allow the surface collection ship to disconnect if a hurricane threatens and reconnect after the storm passes. This is a quote from June 10 2010 update: The ‘top hat’ containment cap installed on June 3 continues to collect oil and gas flowing from the MC252 well and transporting it to a drillship on the surface. The efficiency of the containment operation is improving, with oil collection reaching 17,000 barrels/day today. The transfer of crude oil from the drillship to the barge Massachusetts began the morning of June 9. When the process is complete, the barge will transport the oil to an onshore terminal. The transfer will free up space on the drillship to collect more oil from the well. Work on the first relief well continues and has currently reached a depth of 13,978 feet. The second relief well is at 8,576 feet. The target depth for the wells is around 18,000 ft which should be reached in August. The relief wells should stop any remaining oil and gas flow from the well into the Gulf of Mexico. Almost 3,600 vessels are involved in the response effort, including skimmers, tugs, barges and recovery vessels. Operations to skim oil from the surface of the water now have recovered, in total, approximately 383,000 barrels (16.1 million gallons) of oily liquid. ...
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