Science uncovering truths, piecing together puzzle of BP oil spill

(TNS)

BILOXI, Miss. — Vernon Asper is a scientist who works in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, looking for oil. It's still out there, five years after the nation's worst oil spill — the Deepwater Horizon blowout in April 2010 that killed 11 rig workers and spewed what was estimated at the time to be 205 million gallons into the Gulf over three months.

How much is there and where it is are legitimate questions, but five years out, answers still aren't there. It may have to be enough to know scientists are still looking and that some of it is accounted for — burned, skimmed, oxidized and eaten by bacteria. But it is in the deep waters. And learning how oil connects with sediment there is hugely important to finding where the oil is.

One theory is it collected and moved through a canyon on the Gulf floor like a series of underwater mountain streams, or stuck to the Continental shelf. About 10 million gallons was found to have settled on the Gulf floor around the rig.

Asper, a professor of marine sciences for the University of Southern Mississippi, studies mud and the clouds of material in the water called marine snow. He was with a team that discovered a giant plume of oil and gas suspended in the water column two weeks after the blowout.

Today, meters with hollow glass floats, some moored a mile below the surface, measure the flow of water to see if currents pick up oiled material on the sea floor, lift it back into the water and move it to other places.

Asper and a team received an early grant that allowed them, within months, to place monitors in the deep, near BP's blown Macondo well, and they've been monitoring ever since.

Science works methodically. It's a process, said Jessica Kastler, a geologist and education-program coordinator with USM's Gulf Coast Research Lab. "That's the way science works. It's time-intensive."

There's a disconnect right now between what science can provide and what people expect from scientists, she said. People want answers, she said. "But sometimes the answer is, 'I don't know.'"

The science of the spill and its impact on the northern Gulf — the residents, wildlife and economy — is a quiet drama playing out in the findings of an unprecedented amount of research in the Gulf. The picture is coming together like a puzzle with thousands of pieces. Many pieces are still missing or kept from the public by a massive federal legal case being put together to determine what the spill, and the chemicals used to fight it, did to the environment.

It could easily be two decades before the small pieces of truth assemble into a cohesive picture of what the spill did to the ecosystem, Kastler said, an indication of how truly big the spill was.

Monty Graham, head of USM's Marine Science Department and the Research Lab, said money flowing in for research will make the Gulf of Mexico the most-studied body of water in the world.

This research is building a catalog of work that just wasn't there before the spill, and it's expected to continue for 30 years.

Until the spill, Gulf research was woefully underfunded.

Now, young scientists coming to the region will build careers on the oil spill. "In a way, that sounds good," said one long-time fisheries expert. "In a way, it sounds tragic."

Emerging pieces of the picture show that oil and the chemical dispersants used to break it up is likely contributing to the largest and longest-lasting dolphin die-off on record in the Gulf of Mexico that included dozens still-born.

Scientists found oil entered the food chain in the smallest of organisms of the Gulf near Mobile Bay shortly after the spill.

Toxicology studies show a mix of oil and dispersants hurt animals more than oil alone, partly because breaking down the oil makes it easier to consume.

Sargassum mats — crucial beds of floating material that harbor young marine animals — sink when exposed to oil and then dispersant.

Crude oil interrupts the ability of fish heart cells to beat effectively.

And early findings show oil spill cleanup workers reported increased coughing and wheezing and mental health symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, compared to nonworkers, according to the National Institutes of Health, halfway through a study of 33,000 workers for 10 years.

The study also said exposure levels were higher for those working closest to the spill and while the well was leaking, while many measurements taken on land were at or close to normal exposure levels.

When the well blew, the National Science Foundation pushed money to universities in the form of rapid-response grants to get feet on the ground. Other research entities also responded.

Since then, BP has funded the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative — $500 million for science to span 10 years. Criminal penalties assessed against BP and owner of the rig, Transocean, have been designated to fund another $500 million project through the National Academy of Sciences, called Gulf Project. The National Fisheries and Wildlife Foundation's Gulf Environmental Benefit fund is $356 million for Mississippi alone, and the massive federal legal case with its Natural Resource Damage Assessment includes 240 research projects and $1.3 billion in funding from BP, as well as hundreds of million from federal agencies.

Some 700 peer-reviewed papers have been published so far, Graham said.

All this is happening while, nationally, federal spending on the sciences has been flat. The East and West coasts are both experiencing a downturn in funding, Graham said, but money is coming in for the Gulf and it will keep coming.

A portion of civil penalties for BP's violation of the Clean Water Act will be put into a trust and $40 million of that tagged for science.

What comes with all this will be a better understanding of how the Gulf's ecosystems work, Graham said. And unlike pure science, this body of work also will encompass how people interact with their ecosystem, affect it and thrive or languish with it, he said.

When it all comes together and the NRDA research is released, "we ought to be able to say we know the Gulf of Mexico better than any other body of water on the planet and if we don't get there," he said, "then we'd have to say we didn't do our job."

For now, some of the most telling science is being kept secret as part of the federal case to assess the impact of the spill on natural resources.

Resolving BP's part in that could take years. BP released its own five-year assessment, pronouncing the Gulf economy "rapidly rebounded," saying "the impact to the environment was of short duration and limited in geography."

Ocean Springs, Miss., attorney Robert Wiygul, who represents hundreds of clients in the spill, said determining the damage to resources covers a huge area and the trial will be complicated.

But waiting has its advantages for the federal case.

"The United States isn't going to rush it to trial," he said. "You want time for the studies to play out," to show what really happened.

The fact that it is all part of a legal process does have an unfortunate effect on public access to information and transparency, he said.

Kastler, who has put together a speaker forum at the Gulf Coast Research Lab designed to let scientists interact with the questioning public, wonders what the turnout will be.

"Some are involved and concerned, especially those from communities whose livelihood depend on the Gulf for seafood," she said. "But people still worry, even though they're told its OK."

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©2015 The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss.)

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