BP CAPS LEAKING OIL WELL IN GULF

Encouraging news on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. British Petroleum says it has capped the well that has spewed record amounts of oil since April 22. The well was sealed in mid-July.
BP and federal authorities estimate the amount of oil that has leaked at 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day, dwarfing the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster, when an estimated 260,000 to 750,000 barrels spilled into Prince William Sound, Alaska.
In another development, federal fishery authorities on July 23 said they were reopening more than 26,000 square miles (67,600 sq km) of gulf waters that were closed to commercial fishing, roughly a third of the area that had been closed.
Meanwhile, oil that has leaked continues to wreak havoc on portions of beaches from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle. Some dive shops continue to take divers to sites unaffected by oil, while others have shifted their dive boats from transporting divers to contracting with BP for cleanup operations. Others have turned their focus to inshore freshwater sites for open-water diving and training.
“We’re fighting a battle with perception more than anything else,” Tony Snow, owner of Dive Locker, told the NewsHerald.com in Panama City, Florida. “We have never seen any of this oil, whether on the top, at midlevel or on the floor.”
Snow said he has not had any interruption to his trips due to oil, but John Lesley, operator of Better Bottom Time Dive Charters Inc., said he stopped taking divers out for two weeks in June after some of his divers encountered sheen and tar balls.
“We decided instead of putting them in the water in those conditions we would hold off,” Lesley told NewsHerald.com. “We worry a lot about the people we put in the water. Their safety is paramount. … If there’s any evidence there’s any oil, dispersant or contaminant we’ll shut everything down because that’s what we did before.”
The Florida Keys, untouched by the oil, continues to recover from the perception that it has been. The northern end of the Loop Current remains pinched off in a clockwise eddy, removing any clear path for oil to reach the Florida Keys. In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is no longer producing offshore oil spill trajectory maps. The Gulf Loop Current is a clockwise current that normally carries water from the Yucatan Channel north into the Gulf of Mexico, then back down south off Florida’s west coast, past the Dry Tortugas and into the Gulf Stream.
Federal officials also continue to assert that even if any of the oil did reach Florida that it would be in the form of scattered tar balls and not a large slick of oil.

“Any oil reaching this area (South Florida and the Keys) would have spent considerable time degrading and dispersing and would be in the form of scattered tar balls and not a large surface slick of oil,” a NOAA study said, repeating statements made by the U.S. Coast Guard, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and local officials. Whether oil travels ashore depends upon wind and ocean currents at the time, NOAA said. Tar balls are less stressful on the environment and easier to mitigate, said Billy Causey, superintendent of the southeast region for NOAA.
There are no advisories recommending against travel to the Florida Keys or any other precautions advising visitors and residents not to engage in diving, swimming, fishing or other watersports, according to the Monroe County (Florida) Health Department. Seafood from Florida Keys waters is safe to eat, officials said. NOAA has closed a significant portion of the Gulf of Mexico to recreational and commercial fishing. At press time the closure boundary remained hundreds of miles west of Key West. More than 40 Web cams streaming live video from the Keys’ waters, shorelines and area attractions are also available for the public to view.

Oil Spill Update

Maybe the only thing murkier than what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico is what isn’t happening.
Under the weight of false impressions shaped by national media coverage of the oil spill, the Florida Keys and other Gulf Coast communities are taking some unusual steps.
The Florida Keys is launching a massive campaign to let the public know its waters remain clear, and that oil that has affected other Gulf Coast communities remains far away.
“The Keys have received so much news coverage during the past month and many travel consumers mistakenly think our islands are suffering the same horrific and tragic impacts being seen on some northern Gulf coast shorelines,” said Florida Keys Tourism Council Director Harold Wheeler. “We fortunately are not and need to make the travel consumer understand that.”
The Florida Keys & Key West tourism council launched a new Web and social media-based feature designed to communicate an accurate status of Keys tourism offerings during the Transocean/BP oil spill crisis. Each weekend, videographers will tape visitors enjoying water-related and other vacation offerings in the Keys. The one-minute-long video is to be edited and posted to the official Keys tourism council’s website at www.fla-keys.com well as social media venues by about 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Mondays. The videos are to be date-stamped with no archival footage used in their production. The video is webcasting in a Gulf oil spill section at www.fla-keys.com/oilspill. It has also been uploaded to the tourism council’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAdM56LP5bY.
Other Gulf Coast areas popular with divers have not been as fortunate as the Florida Keys but they too are fighting a misperception that things are worse than they really are.
Some oil has been reported along portions of Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle. The oil has been reported in varying amounts, from a light sheen to more concentrated levels, but can disappear from near-shore waters quickly for a variety of reasons, such as weather patterns. Areas closed one day to the public can be reopened the next. Other areas, like most of the Florida coast, have seen no oil at all. In fact some dive charter trips continue to the Oriskany, the former aircraft carrier sunk 22.5 nautical miles (42 km) off the coast of Pensacola, Florida.
As of June 21, the federal government had closed 36 percent of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing, including spearfishing, but not diving or swimming.
In some areas, oil is less of a deterrent to diving than the logistical hurdles. BP has hired away dive charter boats to help with the oil containment and cleanup. That’s left dive shops like MBT Divers in Pensacola, Florida, with fewer options to take divers to offshore dive sites, which are a big part of the business, manager Josh Gay said. Dive classes at the Florida panhandle dive shop continue, he said, with training for Open Water classes conducted through shore diving.
One common misperception, Gay said, relates to the federal government’s fishing closure. Just because an area is closed to fishing does not mean it’s closed to diving. In fact, he said, many parts of the Gulf without oil are closed to fishing only because of fear that fish have migrated from contaminated water.
“We talked to the Coast Guard, and they said there’s no reason we can’t dive unless we encounter oil,” he said.
Even dive shops as far away as western Louisiana and Texas are affected despite being hundreds of miles from any oil. True Blue Watersports in Lake Charles, Louisiana, had to cancel dive charter trips to the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary because the charter boat it works with, the MV Fling, was hired away for oil recovery work off Alabama.
A similar story comes from Scubatech of NW Fla. in Destin. The dive shop had removed from dive service one dive boat to work for BP but turned down BP’s request to use its other vessel. That changed in mid-June when during an excursion to the Destin East Pass Jetties a mix of snorkelers and divers encountered a light sheen of oil.
Scubatech manager Steve Powell said the other boat is now part of BP’s cleanup operation and that open-water will likely be moved inland to one of Florida’s many freshwater springs.
Powell said that divers inquiring about the availability of dive excursions have been very supportive of the dive shop’s decision to help with oil recovery efforts.

Change in Loop Current Good News for Keys
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has suspended daily production of offshore Transocean/BP oil spill trajectory maps, because a change in ocean currents has minimized the risk to the Florida Keys.
The NOAA website explains the suspension, because the northern end of the Loop Current has been pinched off into a large clockwise eddy (Eddy Franklin) so there is no clear path for spilled oil to enter the Loop Current from the source in the northern Gulf of Mexico that is about 500 miles (800 km) northwest of Key West.
The Gulf Loop Current is a clockwise current that normally carries water from the Yucatan Channel north into the Gulf of Mexico, then back down south off Florida’s west coast, past the Dry Tortugas and into the Gulf Stream.
NOAA is not certain how long the separation will remain, but the agency plans to resume production of offshore spill trajectory maps, if needed.
If any of the oil does make it to the vicinity of the Florida Straits, it should be weathered and appear in the form of tar balls, not the thick aqueous oil seen in the northern Gulf of Mexico near the spill site, said Billy Causey, superintendent of the southeast region for NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries. Causey said it is not known if the tar balls would end up in Keys near-shore waters or on coastlines; or float by the Keys in deeper water.

For More Information
Deepwater Horizon Response
www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com

NOAA Office of Response and Restoration
response.restoration.noaa.gov/deepwaterhorizon

Gulf Coast Area Chamber of Commerce
www.alagulfcoastchamber.com

Emerald Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau
www.destin-fwb.com

Florida Keys
www.fla-keys.com

Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
http://floridakeys.noaa.gov/

Louisiana Office of Tourism
www.louisianatravel.com

Mississippi Gulf Coast
www.gulfcoast.org

Panama City, Florida
www.visitpanamacitybeach.com

Pensacola (Florida) Visitor Information Center
www.visitpensacola.com

Scuba Conditions in the Gulf
HYPERLINK "http://www.gulfstatediving.com" www.gulfstatediving.com