Gulf oil spill: NOAA ship to study underwater oil plume, Cousteau says it's a nightmare (video)

Oil Spill Situation Map May 26, 2010    Map Credit: Deep Water Horizon Unified Command

May 26, 2010 – As BP prepares to try a top kill, which the British oil company calls its best chance to stop the oil that continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, it's a matter of "wait and see" if it works. Whether the procedure, one that has never been tried at this one-mile depth, is successful or not, the work to drill two new wells to permanently end this disastrous rupture.

Today, the Unified Command announced a mission to study what's happening to the oil and dispersants as they flow out underwater in the Gulf. "The NOAA Ship Gordon Gunter, a 224-foot fisheries research vessel, will embark on a water column and fisheries sampling mission in the Gulf of Mexico using its sophisticated sonar equipment to help define the plume near the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill site and adjacent waters. The mission is a collaborative project between NOAA, the University of New Hampshire, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the University of South Florida."

Earlier this week, Sam Champion of ABC and Philippe Couseteau Jr, the son of Philippe Cousteau and grandson of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, went on a mission of their own. The video below is the result. It's an up-close look at the underwater world of the Gulf contaminated by oil and the dispersants used to treat it.

Hazmat dive into the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

First story in the What's at Risk series:

Gulf oil spill: What's at risk? Breton National Wildlife Refuge, Teddy Roosevelt visits (video)

Map

The situation map above gives an overview of the spill coverage. The PDF version can be enlarged for a better look.

Background

The Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred on April 20, 2010 when the drilling rig platform exploded, burned and sank two days later. Oil continues to flow from the ruptured well one mile under the Gulf of Mexico. Of the 126 people on the drilling platform at the time of the explosion, eleven were killed.
In the aftermath, an environmental and economic catastrophe is being created, as oil continues to spew into the waters of the Gulf, only slightly abated by the insertion of a tube to siphon off oil from the broken well.

Experts disagree on how much oil gushes from the broken well head every hour, 24 hours a day, even after BP successfully inserted a smaller pipe to siphon off some of the oil and gas. The lowest estimate of 5,000 barrels a day has now been discredited, with an admission by BP that they just don't know how much oil is continuously flowing, contaminating one of the most ecologically rich areas on earth.

In addition, many environmental scientists believe that the dispersants being used to break up the oil at its source and on the surface of the ocean may be more harmful to the environment than the oil is.
 

For a look at one coral reef area in the Gulf of Mexico before the spill:

Gulf oil spill disaster: BP update, oil spill flow counter and a look beneath Gulf waters (video)

More coverage:

More oil spill stories from Environmental News Examiner

Gulf Oil Spill Examiner - Tony Pann