Category Archives: NOAA

Watching the BP Oil Leak in Gulf : An Acrostic Verse

When did this tragedy of oil and gas spill start? Were we watching a spill cam?

Always to discuss dead and dying turtles, pelicans and  rare terns– normal is it?

The truth is we discussed limits, coastal erosion and small spills here and there.

Cameras showing  jetties and reserves were in planks politicians had to  cram.

However, sportfishing, jet skis and music in good crowded bars marked a visit.

In oysters, crabs, shrimp, fin fish and airboat rides came wealth with care.

Nobody thought everything was going forward and would turn out well.

Great care was had for all threatened by an oil coated kind of deadly hell.

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The decades of struggle to protect and heal and fill the coast with profits too.

How we argued and fought as to all there was to know and plan and do.

Each since April of two thousand ten are brought to a  struggle new. 

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British Petroleum changed its name to letters before Deep Water Horizon’s fire.

Petroleum and natural gas heated pipe, plate, tanks  and white-hot steel wire.

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Of the day’s  pain and fear we hear and  of dire and painful  escape from woe.

It is known that eleven tales are unheard in studie of fire and lingering flow.

Lives of eleven consumed and families grieve those who at sea to work did go.

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Lives lost, others wounded and injured and in pain on  lonely  lifeboats.

Each still wounded and in pain came into ships rescued from an oiled fiery sea.

As these waited lawyers met them with right-waiving legal notes.

Kept for many hours in  mental  and social stress before set on land as free.

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In days to come Transocean, Halliburton and BP PLC parsed the blame.

No coffins eleven had for bodies consumed in a gusher’s raging flame.

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Greatly wrong series of  estimates of  flow — vast oil flowed out in doom.

Until a vast spread of emulsions, slicks, sheens raged across the wild seas.

Lapping nearer and into swamps that are breeding and nursery room.

Fingering first past burns and booms lines of  fouling forces flow with ease.

Oil Spill and Setbacks: 12 Questions

As I write this the saw which BP was using to cut the riser on the blow out preventer has gotten stuck in the pipe a mile down. The first cut was made which was vital but the second cut has been impeded by the saw blade getting stuck. They hop to bring the second saw down or use other instruments to remove the saw and operate the one that is stuck. THIS IS YET ANOTHER SETBACK!

I have a few questions to ask about setbacks. Most are about avoiding future setbacks? :

1. NOAA has been discussing what they are doing now and it is impressive. How will they contribute to the kind of policy infrastructure for the Gulf Coast that we need to build or will we use the structure of government as an excuse not to govern?

2.Has NASA and its enormous infrastructure for fluid and pressure studies been used to design the caps we are about to use to contain this oil? If they have not been used and all works well then I am unable to complain much but I wonder if the first containment dome would have worked if NASA had been consulted as to its design. Can we stop squandering our knowledge wealth?

3.When nesting oiled birds are rescued and their nests are known are the eggs brought to incubators and their chicks raised in zoos so that we a t least preserve an insurance policy outside the wild?

4. I ask the same question as regards nesting turtles — except that the behavior is different. Almost all should have hatched now but if relevant — are we saving at risk eggs in artificial beaches when we find them? 

5.Are we creating at least a small emergency Atlantic Bluefin tuna hatchery to mimic nature in this area and release later?

6.Are we calling in and positioning clean distressed aged slab, shell, gravel and other assets to quickly position in areas where bridges and berms need to be built?    

7. Are we considering the list of designs and inventions we might need for the future even if we are not going to address them now? A few things come to mind:

 a. We could use a speedy starter ship which can get anywhere and start drilling relief wells right away and then be replaced by a compatible long-term drill rig later.

b.We could use a deployable  circular boom system which could surround a site except for gates and keep a high percentage of deep water oil in a circle with a twenty-mile radius from the well site.

c. We could use quick deployment blimp bought in by helicopters and inflated on site in air that would provide integrated sensing, viewing and communications from the first day.

So are we listing thing we would like to have?

8. Have any oral historians been hired to interview those who are involved and impacted when they are not needed to respond so we can have a complete record of these instances and events?

9.Are we building an aviary in the area so we can keep birds nearby until beaches and marshes are clean and then release them to the original sites?

10. Are at least some oiled creatures being tagged so that the future assessments may be made correctly?

11. Have the Audubon Society, the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge and other major local environmental institutions been given funds and brought into official response groups?

12. Are specific gravity measurements being made of various emulsion samples so we can better calculate their behavior in the water column?