Oil Spill Disasters

Listening for Oil Spills

Science |

In Brief...

When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill erupted into the Gulf of Mexico last April, the only view researchers and citizens had of the gushing oil was the video feed controlled by BP. The team found that frequencies near 200 kilohertz were best for tracking small oil droplets like those in the Deepwater Horizon spill. Weber will present the research tomorrow at the Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics in Cancun, Mexico.. The team's detection of natural gas came in handy when BP's gushing well was capped in July. Researchers had known that natural gas bubbled up from the floor of the gulf, but they had no idea it was this common, Weber says. The techniques the UNH-NOAA team developed during the Deepwater Horizon incident have already led to discoveries of natural gas seeps in other areas, she says.

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