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Tar balls in Florida not from oil spill

Crunch

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NEW ORLEANS, May 19 (UPI) -- Tar balls that washed ashore in the Florida Keys were not from the oil leak spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, officials said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, heavy oil from the spill in the gulf reached the Louisiana marshland as BP worked to drain off oil gushing from the well on the sea floor.

The tar balls -- ranging in size from 3 inches to 8 inches in diameter -- were found Monday and Tuesday at Zachary Taylor Park in Key West and sent to a laboratory in Connecticut for analysis.

The U.S. Coast Guard said tests "conclusively show" that a sampling of the tar balls doesn't match the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, The Miami Herald reported. Their origin, however, remains unknown.

Tar balls in Florida not from oil spill - UPI.com

How could this be? Is it possible that there are other oil leaks in the Gulf?

In a paper presented at the 2000 Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, and titled Estimates of Total Hydrocarbon Seepage into the Gulf of Mexico Based on Satellite Remote Sensing Images, one researcher estimated that 500,000 barrels of oil seep into the Gulf each year, twice the result of the Exxon Valdez spill. That seepage is not addressed by any government, and mitigation efforts are non-existent.

500,000 Barrels of Oil Leak into Gulf of Mexico - Associated Content - associatedcontent.com

I wonder how much of this BP will have to "mitigate"?
 
Well... lets just hope we haven't accidently released godzilla...
 
Oil and tar balls wash up on beaches in California all the time. It's a natural process. The sea floor spews oil constantly.
 
Oil and tar balls wash up on beaches in California all the time. It's a natural process. The sea floor spews oil constantly.

Much more likely some ship dumped its oil off shore.. that is much more realistic.
 
Much more likely some ship dumped its oil off shore.. that is much more realistic.

And why pray tell would some random ship dump oil in the Gulf?

Oh no lads! Our tanker is over loaded! Better poor of a couple thousand gallons of oil. No one will ever know! :lol:
 
Oil and tar balls wash up on beaches in California all the time. It's a natural process. The sea floor spews oil constantly.

Is this fact? i had a feeling it was impossible for these oil balls to conveniently show up right after a different BP oil spill.
 
WRAPUP 3-US to check BP spill size, heavy oil comes ashore | Reuters

msnbc this morning put up some spine chilling pictorials

60 minutes sunday showed a journalist in a boat reaching his hand out into the goo and pulling up a glob that musta been a half gallon, all congealed

obama's katrina is turning into chernobyl

My Way News - Oil's arrival in loop current has Fla. on edge

what, other than exempting epa studies and expediting drilling permits, has the white house done to address this disaster?
 
And why pray tell would some random ship dump oil in the Gulf?

Oh no lads! Our tanker is over loaded! Better poor of a couple thousand gallons of oil. No one will ever know! :lol:

Used oil. Not freshly pumped crude. (I would imagine anyway)
 
I heard yesterday on the radio that a scientist analyzed the video they showed of the pipe being fitted on the leak in an effort to siphon some of the oil. He concluded by slowing the video and looking at the pixels to judge how fast the oil was coming out and how much was coming out that the leak is the equivalent to the Exxon-Valdez spill every 4-5 days.

That's unbelievable. Louisiana is starting to get hit hard, I have a feeling this is going to get much uglier before it gets any better.
 
Tar balls are common from ships and ocean floor seepage in Florida.

Tar Balls Wash Up On Florida Keys | North America > United States from AllBusiness.com


USED TO BE COMMON

Tar balls were once so common that hotels provided guests with wrapped swabs to wash them off their feet, said Stephen Leatherman, director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University. Tougher enforcement of laws against ocean dumping sharply reduced the number of incidents, he said, but they still wash up on beaches, usually in small amounts and causing little harm.

But in the summer of 2000, a massive drift of tar balls and oily mats washed up on beaches from northern Miami-Dade County to northern Broward County. The source was never discovered, although authorities assumed the oil had been illegally dumped by a passing ship. The oil killed an estimated 7,800 sea turtle hatchlings, about 24,000 pounds of fish and 12 seabirds.

Leatherman said tar balls can be bad news for beaches. Unless stopped at the shoreline, he said, the tar can burrow into the sand, staying there for years until exposed by a storm.

"You think you're rid of them, and there they are again," he said. "It's very unpleasant to see a beach like this. And then it gets on your body. It's a total turnoff to tourists. You've got to get this stuff at the shoreline before it gets into dry sand."

And what's a turnoff to tourists could be death for wildlife. Sea turtle hatchlings would be particularly vulnerable to tar balls because the hatchlings tend to swim out to drifts of seaweed and other debris, precisely the sort of materials that would catch tar balls.

Endangered leatherback turtles will start hatching from southeast Florida beaches in mid-June, said Paul Davis, Palm Beach County's sea turtle coordinator.

"If the oil gets over here on the east coast, that will be an additional threat to those hatchlings," he said.

A team of scientists from the University of South Florida tracking the spill said Tuesday that a branch of the slick has been caught up in the loop current, the powerful stream of water that sweeps from the Gulf through the Florida Straits and up the South Florida coast. They said it could reach Key West by Sunday or Monday and Miami by May 28.

BALLS 'PRETTY BENIGN'

Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said a light sheen of oil, branching off the main slick, has moved close to or entered the loop current. But she said the slick, itself, remained dozens of miles from the current. The loop current joins the Gulf Stream in the Florida Straits and then veers away from the state into the Atlantic after passing Palm Beach County.

Scientists have said that any oil that does make the trip to the Florida Straits is likely to transform into tar balls along the way, as lighter components evaporate. While capable of causing environmental damage, scientists say tar balls would not be as harmful as a thick slick of fresh oil washing up on a beach.

As long as they floated on the surface, for example, they would be "pretty benign" for South Florida's coral reefs, said Richard Dodge, director of the National Coral Reef Institute of Nova Southeastern University.
 
Well... lets just hope we haven't accidently released godzilla...

Well, BP could use him for their new corporate logo.

godzilla.jpg
 
I heard yesterday on the radio that a scientist analyzed the video they showed of the pipe being fitted on the leak in an effort to siphon some of the oil. He concluded by slowing the video and looking at the pixels to judge how fast the oil was coming out and how much was coming out that the leak is the equivalent to the Exxon-Valdez spill every 4-5 days.

That's unbelievable. Louisiana is starting to get hit hard, I have a feeling this is going to get much uglier before it gets any better.

b6ysl2.jpg


Beyond Petroleum... Way Beyond.
 
Is this fact? i had a feeling it was impossible for these oil balls to conveniently show up right after a different BP oil spill.

All the time. California beaches constantly have black oil patches on them. It's completely NATURAL.
 
So is this oil going to hit the beaches, or is it just going to evaporate at sea? Sweet crude does evaporate, just like gasoline.
 
What the? Oil doesn't evaporate, unless it is in a engine. To the Opening post they are still going too have to pay a lot of cash anyway, because of there screw up.


Here is a CNN article on the subject in question.


From the damage, already done I would put it at about a billion of dollars. This spill happened because of greed, and stupid ass people who put money before lives, and the people of the gulf coast.

The oil is hitting the Wetlands of Louisiana

Greed, negligence behind BP oil spill - CNN.com
 
What the? Oil doesn't evaporate, unless it is in a engine.

Yes it does.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/breaking-news/72744-wheres-oil-model-suggests-much-may-gone.html

About 35 percent of a spill the size of the one in the Gulf, consisting of the same light Louisiana crude, released in weather conditions and water temperatures similar to those found in the Gulf now would simply evaporate, according to data that The Associated Press entered into the program.
 
However in water I kind of doubt it dissolves that quicklu, and I really never really noticed that xd.

It doesn't desolve..... it evaporates.... blows away on the wind..... becomes a gas..... that kinda thing.
 
Crunch that is my term for evaporates. ;)

Got it..... the oil disolves from the water into the air.... makes perfect sense now that you point it out.

Senior moment. :mrgreen:
 
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