Oil Spills - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Sep 6, 2019 · Oil in the Ocean. The systematic study of oil in the ocean is relatively new to science, but since the late 1960s it has grown to encompass almost every area of oceanography. Because oil is not a single substance, scientists face a number of challenges when it enters an environment as complex as the ocean.
Mixing Oil and Water – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Jun 23, 2004 · These weathering reactions have different rates depending on the chemical structure of the oil, habitat conditions (such as water temperature or oxygen and nutrient supply), and mixing of the water by wind, waves, and currents. In some spills, oil does not last much beyond weeks to months. But when oil pours into shallow waters with muddy ...
FAQs : Oil in the Ocean - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Jul 28, 2014 · Much of the oil stays beneath the surface and gets caught in deep currents that move it independently of the surface oil and in complex, constantly changing plumes. As of June 21, researchers had found multiple plumes of oil as deep as 3,300 feet down and more than 140 miles from the drill site. Some of the plumes are more than ten miles long.
While Oil Gently Seeps from the Seafloor
May 14, 2009 · The oil seep offers a natural laboratory for scientists to study what happens to oil in the ocean ecosystem. (Photo by Dave Valentine, University of California, Santa Barbara) There’s an oil spill every day off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., where oil is seeping naturally from cracks in the seafloor into the ocean.
Natural Oil Seeps - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Aug 1, 2006 · In recent years, advances in remote sensing have enabled more accurate detection and estimates of natural oil flows in the ocean. In locations where seeps are found, oil flows slowly up through networks of cracks, forming springs of hydrocarbons similar to the La Brae tar pits on land. Lighter compounds rise buoyantly to the water’s surface ...
Oil Spills – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Apr 20, 2010 · Read in-depth interviews with leading ocean experts; Dive into immersive photography and multimedia stories from the field; Stay up to date with news about the ocean community, key discoveries, and events; And, as a member, you will get WHOI’s popular Right Whale T-shirt, 15% off on all WHOI merchandise, and more; Become a Member and get ...
Where Did Deepwater Horizon Oil Go? - Woods Hole …
Oct 27, 2014 · Oil and gas were trapped in a plume that flowed at depth from the damaged Macondo well in the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. In a new study, scientists propose that tiny droplets of oil in the plume coagulated and sank to the seafloor—much of it within 45 miles of the well. (Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Sunlight and the fate of oil at sea
Sep 29, 2022 · In April of 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, located off the coast of Louisiana, experienced a catastrophic fire. Eleven people working on the rig died in the explosion. Unseen, about a mile below this human tragedy, the Macondo oil well connected to the Deepwater Horizon rig (by a long, long pipe) ruptured, releasing barrel upon barrel of ...
Oil in the Ocean: A Complex Mix : Oil in the Ocean
May 2, 2011 · Oil in the Ocean: A Complex Mix. A multimedia presentation featuring scientists and engineers who continued the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution legacy of oil spill research by providing an objective insight into the immediate and potential impacts of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This photo of oil and water in the Gulf ...
What Happened to Deepwater Horizon Oil?
Dec 23, 2016 · In 2014 we published a study in PNAS that partially answered the first question. We identified how much and where Deepwater Horizon oil was deposited onto the deep seafloor. In our new study, we examined more than 400 sediment seafloor samples and investigated what happened to that oil in the cold ocean depths in the four years after the spill.