Richard Charter says: Let’s see if it fingerprints back to the Deepwater Horizon blowout….
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/tar-balls-reported-at-key-west-beach-surveys-693727.html
Tar balls reported at Key West beach; surveys continue Tuesday
Palm Beach Post Staff Report
Updated: 8:17 a.m. Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Posted: 11:23 p.m. Monday, May 17, 2010
The U.S. Coast Guard and marine scientists will be surveying shorelines in the Keys Tuesday morning to see if they find more tar balls after many were found today on Key West beaches.
Park rangers at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park found tarballs throughout the day – about three an hour – at the park and nearby Navy beach at Truman annex, according to a Coast Guard news release late tonight.
The balls were 3-to-8 inches in diameter.
Coast Guard pollution investigators responded to this morning’s report of 20 tar balls at Fort Zachary, but found no additional tar balls. Samples were sent to a laboratory to determine where their origin.
In the month since an offshore drilling platform exploded, killing 11 workers, BP PLC has struggled to stop the leak from a blown-out underwater well. Over the weekend, engineers finally succeeded in using a stopper-and-tube combination to siphon some of the gushing oil into a tanker.
Scientists have warned that oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig may have entered currents in the Gulf that would bring oil to the Keys and eventually the East Coast of Florida.
The Keys surveys Tuesday will involve Coast Guard officials, including aerial surveys, and Florida Keys National marine Sanctuaries personnel, the Coast Guard reported.
In the meantime, Coast Guard officials say not to pick up any tar balls you find and to report them at (800) 424-8802. Oiled shorelines can be reported to (866) 448-5816.
____________________________________
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-18/coast-guard-says-tar-balls-found-at-key-west-florida-update1-.html
Business Week
Bloomberg
Coast Guard Says Tar Balls Found at Key West, Florida (Update1)
May 18, 2010, 9:26 AM EDT
MORE FROM BUSINESSWEEK
(Updates with quantity and size in second paragraph. For more on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, see {EXT4 <GO>}.)
By Jim Polson
May 18 (Bloomberg) — Tar balls collected by Key West, Florida, park rangers yesterday have been shipped for analysis to determine if they came from BP Plc’s leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
A Coast Guard helicopter will carry a trained pollution investigator over the area today to search for more oil, Petty Officer Luke Pinneo said in a telephone interview. Park staff found 20 tar balls ranging in diameter from 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) to 8 inches, Pinneo said.
The discovery at Fort Zachary Taylor, a state park at Key West’s western tip, follows assertions yesterday by William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida College of Marine Science. Hogarth said “filaments’ of oil from the BP slick had entered the Loop Current, a river of salt water that exits the Gulf around Key West and becomes the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean. Hogarth said his comments were based on satellite photos and computer models.
The Coast Guard yesterday disputed Hogarth’s finding. The spill began after an April 20 explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which BP leased from Transocean Ltd. Eleven workers were killed.
“The oil has not entered the Loop Current,” Mary Landry, the U.S. Coast Guard rear admiral who serves as on-scene federal coordinator for the spill response, said yesterday at a press conference in Robert, Louisiana. “There might be some leading- edge sheen that’s getting closer.”
No oil coming ashore, including tar balls, is “imminent” on Florida’s west coast, from Pensacola to Naples, Dave MacDowell, a BP spokesman in St. Petersburg, Florida, said today in an interview.
–Editors: Tony Cox, Kim Jordan.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Polson in New York at jpolson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Susan Warren at susanwarren@bloomberg.net.
______________________________
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/05/18/gulf.oil.tar.balls/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29
CNN
Coast Guard: Tar balls recovered from Key West, Florida
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 18, 2010 — Updated 1509 GMT (2309 HKT)
(CNN) — The Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will conduct shoreline surveys in Key West, Florida, on Tuesday after tar balls were found on a beach there, officials said.
The Coast Guard said in a statement it responded to the Florida Park Service report of 20 tar balls on the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park about 5:15 p.m. Monday.
“Park rangers conducted a shoreline survey of Fort Zachary Taylor and the adjacent Navy beach at Truman Annex and recovered the tar balls at a rate of nearly three tar balls an hour throughout the day, with the heaviest concentration found at high tide,” the Coast Guard statement said.
Samples of the tar balls were sent to a laboratory for analysis to determine their origin. An aerial search of the area with a pollution investigator is also planned for Tuesday.
Although the source of the tar balls was unclear Tuesday, they could be an ominous sign that oil from a massive spill into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana has spread south and east.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters, in a blog post Monday night on the Weather Underground website, said satellite imagery has confirmed that “a substantial tongue of oil” from the spill has entered the Gulf of Mexico’s Loop Current.
The current flows through the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico, then northward, where it loops southeast just south of the Florida Keys and travels to the west side of the western Bahamas, he said.
However, whether or not the oil is actually in that current is the subject of debate. In a briefing Monday, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry told reporters that while some oil sheen was migrating toward the current, there was no oil in it.
“There’s a very small stream of oil that has a very light sheen that is getting close to the Loop Current,” NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco told PBS’ “NewsHour” on Monday. “It’s likely that at some point it will be entrained by the Loop Current.”
However, if the oil enters the current, it would take an estimated nine to 12 days to reach Florida, she said. Along the way, it would also become “highly diluted” and undergo natural weathering.
“Any oil that would be reaching [the] Florida Strait might be in the form of tarballs, for example, and whether it ever comes ashore or not would be a function of onshore winds.”
Masters said that portions of the Loop Current travel at about 4 mph, meaning the oil could take four to five days to reach Florida.
However, neither of those time frames would explain the tar balls found on the Keys on Monday. Researchers say it’s unlikely, although not impossible, that the tar balls are from the Gulf oil spill.
Special thanks to Richard Charter
Oil spill streaks southeast due to influence from the Loop Current
Oil streak close-up view
