Starship Asterisk*

• 23 April 2010: Ships Race to Contain the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
  26 April 2010: Sunken Oil Rig Now Leaking Crude; Robots Head to the Rescue
  28 April 2010: Coast Guard’s New Plan to Contain the Gulf Oil Spill: Light It on Fire
  29 April 2010: Uh-Oh: Gulf Oil Spill May Be 5 Times Worse Than Previously Thought
  30 April 2010: Gulf Oil Spill Reaches U.S. Coast; New Orleans Reeks of “Pungent Fuel Smell”

Scanning the emerging news coverage is a little like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

owlice wrote:An old (as in long-time, not age!) friend of mine from Slidell, LA was visiting this weekend. She and her husband were working on their sailboat on Thursday -- docked in the canal behind their house -- and could smell the oil 65 miles away as the crow flies. Sixty-five miles! Imagine what it must be like for those so much closer!

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=43897 wrote:
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Observed From the International Space Station

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandeleur_Islands wrote:
<<The Chandeleur Islands (French: Les Îles de Chandeleur [Candlemas/Groundhog's Day]) are a chain of uninhabited barrier islands approximately 50 miles (80 km) long, located in the Gulf of Mexico. They form the easternmost point of the state of Louisiana, USA and are a part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge. They are an important migrating point for many birds on their way south, and are a prime marsh and forest wildlife area.

The islands were formed over two thousand years ago as the rim of the St. Bernard Lobe of the Mississippi River delta.

Prior to destruction by a hurricane in 1915 there was a fishing settlement on the islands, and even earlier there had been farming on the islands. An old lighthouse built in the 1960s stood as a landmark and recognizable location for pilots flying over the Gulf of Mexico. This lighthouse, and the islands, were constantly eroded and changed by wave action, and most dramatically after the storm surges following hurricanes.

The islands have been generally shrinking and migrating landward since the late 1800s. A survey in the 1980s estimated that they would be in existence for about three more centuries. Before 1996, the seaward front of the islands lost about 20-30 feet of land each year, mostly replaced at the rear. From 1996 to 2004, the loss rate grew to about 300 feet per year. In 1998, Hurricane Georges destroyed the islands and left the lighthouse in the middle of the ocean, and the barrier islands only just recovered when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. However, the combined effect of Hurricane Dennis and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 reduced the island to shoals or sub-surface formations, and toppled the Chandeleur Island Lighthouse.

The left image is from 2004 and the right is after Hurricane Katrina, showing the reduction of the islands.

Scientists monitoring the US oil spill with ESA’s Envisat radar satellite say that it has entered the Loop Current, a powerful conveyor belt that flows clockwise around the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida.

In this Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) image, acquired on 18 May 2010, advanced processing methods have been performed to display ocean surface roughness variations and Doppler-derived ocean surface radial velocities around the oil spill area in the Gulf of Mexico. A long tendril of the oil spill (outlined in white) is visible extending down into the Loop Current (red arrow).

Credits: CLS

bystander wrote:20 May 2010: Good News for Florida, Bad News for Louisiana’s Wetlands

<<Will the Florida Keys catch a break with the loop current? Most observers are now in agreement that one of the biggest ecological worries about the BP oil spill—that it could reach the Gulf of Mexico’s loop current that flows to the Keys—has begun to occur.

However, The New York Times reports today via Greenwire that eddies around the edge of the current are keeping much of the oil out of it.>>

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=44036 wrote:

Sizing up the weeks-long spill in the Gulf of Mexico and its impacts is proving a challenge for marine and coastal scientists. The source is beneath 1600 meters of seawater, the winds and currents spreading the oil can be capricious, and the marine life in the oil's path is spread over hundreds of square kilometers, from the sea floor to the surface. Commercial fisheries have already been affected, and fragile coastal marshlands are at risk. Just monitoring all these ecosystems is the first challenge; gauging the toll taken and sounding the all clear will come later. Here are five of the key questions that scientists will be trying to answer over the coming months and years.

1. What's happening with the oil?
2. What's happening to life on the sea floor?
3. What's happening to marine life?
4. What's happening to coastal ecosystems?
5. What's happening to fisheries?