The creating of timelines can be an effective technique used in various area of someone's everyday life. Adults may use them as a record of achieving goals either in their personal life or at work. Students are asked to create them in school to chronicle the history of certain events and then use them as a study guide.
The objective of this timeline is to chronicle the events that led to the blowout of the BP Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf.
Student materials:
Timeline of BP Deepwater Horizon Accident
As a teenager you have probably kept a journal that chronicles some part of your life. Perhaps it concerns a long-term relationship, a family vacation or a day to day record of your life. Looking back at it may give you insight on how to proceed with some of these life experiences and help you with making choices in the future. Even the simple act of looking back at the chronology of your text messaging may make you stop and think about the next text you send. Most often, in education, timelines are used in history and perhaps science classes, but could be easily used in any area of study. Timelines can cross days or decades when recording historic events. It is critical that historians use these timelines as tools to review the past and help influence future decisions and trends.
The BP Deepwater Horizon accident and resulting oil spill claimed 11 lives and has raised havoc with areas of the gulf coast and its communities. The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Report to the President, released in January 2011, was dedicated to the 11 workers that lost their lives on April 20, 2010 as a result of the accident. One of the ultimate goals of the investigation and revealing report is to hopefully prevent a repeat occurrence of such an accident or anything remotely like it.
Your task is to create a timeline that chronicles the events that led to the accident and oil spill of the BP Deepwater Horizon Well in the gulf.
Materials:
Blank paper/poster board, ruler, pencil, markers (Alternative: Timeline Computer Program), Copy of Chapter 1 of "Deepwater; The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling, pages 1-19.
Procedure:
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Create you're blank linear timeline. This could be something as simple as a horizontal line with established points that will correspond with a time and event.
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Read chapter 1 of the Deepwater report provided by your teacher and record the chain of events of April 20, 2010 in chronological order from left to right
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Correspond what you feel are the most important events leading up to the accident,
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with the time and points on the line.
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After completing the timeline, go back and read it through and see if there is anything
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you want to adjust or change. If needed, create a new final edited timeline.
*Remember, the idea here is not to write an essay. Write what is most important in conveying what led to the end result displayed at the end of the timeline.
When you are satisfied with your timeline, answer the following questions:
What did you interpret as the most critical moment in the time line? Why?
What could have prevented this accident?
How can you take what you have learned in this exercise and apply it to your life?
Activity: Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV)"Undersea Heroes"
Students will observe and perhaps try to operate an ROV owned by the Sound School Robotic and Marine Engineering group. They will compare the use of the ROV in an indoor tank where water conditions are calm and clear, to the conditions in New Haven Harbor/Long Island Sound where conditions are less than ideal.
Activity: Studying Ocean Currents
Possible activity using GIS (Geographic Information System) to study the predicted flow of oil, based on ocean currents.
The Clean-up
The spill leaves BP with an estimated fourteen to twenty three billion-dollar cleanup bill. This does not include the billions of dollars of damage claims that will be rolling in for years to come. (32)A tool called the Oil Budget Calculator was developed by NOAA and the Department of the Interior in order to estimate what percentage of the oil was recovered, burned, skimmed, evaporated, dissolved or dispersed. Seventeen percent of the oil was recovered directly from the well head, five percent burned and three percent skimmed. Twenty four percent of the oil was either chemically or naturally dispersed while twenty five percent of it evaporated or dissolved. That left another twenty six percent as residual oil which became part of the sediment, washed up as tar balls or remained as surface or subsurface deposits. (33)
There were and still remain varying opinions of just how bad the repercussions would be from the spill. The spill discharged more that twenty times the amount of oil created by the
Valdez
accident and the coastal environment was very different. According to a group of scientists interviewed by Time magazine, some of them felt that the severity of the spill might have been blown out of proportion. The oil from the Macondo well was much lighter than the product from
Valdez,
which means it would be more likely to have the properties to allow it to evaporate. This is coupled with the fact that the water of the Gulf is much warmer that that of Prince William Sound. The warmth of the water could also mean that the natural occurring bacteria of the Gulf would do a better job at breaking down the oil. There was also the belief that the flow of the Mississippi may have helped in pushing the oil away from the shore, helping to protect the marsh ecosystem. (34) Mark Ploen, a spill consultant on the Gulf spill who worked on the Valdez accident, supervised response teams that used skimmers to pick up a daily average of fifteen thousand barrels a day. Dozens of vessels, including local shrimp boats, used booms to collect the oil and then set it on fire to burn. Wes Tunnell, a coral reef expert from Texas A and M questioned how long the oil had the porential of remaining in and impacting the Gulf. He revisited a spill he worked in the in the Bay of Campeche, Mexico in 1979 to see if oil was still present. What he discovered gave him some insight on how the Gulf spill may be different in the long haul. On the calm, sheltered side of the Enmideo reef he found a three inch mat of oil contaminated sediment. On the unprotected side of the reef that was exposed to ocean currents and waves, he could not find evidence of the oil's presence. His thought was that if there is wave action then there is ample oxygen for the Gulf's bacteria to break down the oil readily. It is when the oil is allowed to sink to the sediments or get incorporated into the marshlands that there is a concern about it remaining in the environment long term, potentially spreading its harmful toxicity to the ecosystems inhabitants. A French biologist, Philippe Bodin who studied a tanker spill in 1978 off the coast of France actually believes that the waters of the Gulf are at greater risk of long-term effects from the oil. He believes that the combination of the less oxygenated Gulf waters in combination with the use of Corexit 9500, a dispersant, will be toxic to the plankton which serve as the base of the food chain, and therefore to the developing young organisms that feed on them. Bodin and other scientists believe that some dispersants are more toxic to wildlife that the oil itself. (35) Mandy Joye, a biochemist from the University of Georgia, found borderline hypoxic oxygen levels associated with a large oil and gas plume from Macondo that remained well below the surface where pelagic organisms reside. Again the concern is over the dispersants that were actually pumped into the water at the level of the leaking well and bacteria depleting oxygen in the process of breaking down the dispersed oil.(36)
Although there appeared to be differences of opinion concerning which methods were the best to use in remediation, one thing was for certain, everyone had concerns about the fragile breeding grounds, the marshes. The marshes are not only home to thousands of endangered and threatened birds, and an array of other wildlife, they serve as the nurseries for the fish and crustaceans that support the livelihood of so many along the southern coast. The oil floated north on currents to the marshes sticking to and covering grasses and mangroves. Past oil spills and remediation practices have proven that trying to remove contaminated sediments, burning or cutting in the marshes only damaged the marshes, putting them at the risk of no recovery. Local SCAT(Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Technique) teams organized by BP, traveled the Louisiana coast daily to determine the damage and potential progress of the spill. The tides and wave action appeared to be helping the hydrophobic booms in keeping the oil somewhat contained, preventing its spread deeper into the marshes. In places where there were barrier islands, this method was less effective and more intensive cleanup was needed. Dozens of oiled birds and turtles needed to be rescued. As federal officials and BP argued over jurisdiction, brown pelicans ran the risk of dying from hyperthermia due to the lack of insulation caused by the oil-soaked feathers. (37)
Of course the threat of the toxic oil and dispersants in the waters threatened to bring the local seafood industry to a grinding halt. With the evidence that beaches in Prince William Sound still carried the remnants of the
Exxon Valdez
spill, consumers were afraid to partake in Louisiana's offerings. But Kerry St. Pe', a local who worked for twenty-five years managing oil spill cleanups for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, believes that the southern coast could recover more naturally with this spill. The weathered, travelling oil from off shore to the marshes is more likely to have lost some of its toxicity in the move. He also believes that there are already large communities of "oil eating" bacteria that have been established as a response to frequent, less severe spills over the years. This would decrease the need to use extensive bioremediation. He also points out that much of the marsh vegetation that looks dead and is covered in oil, will regenerate from underground rhizomes. (38)
The Animals
You may have seen the heart-warming commercials on television about the Dawn dish detergent to the rescue of oil covered birds in the Gulf. Dawn along with other natural and man-made surfactants, (Surface Active Agents), have been used in treating oil-covered animals for decades. They basically work by reducing the surface tension of water to allow the water and oil to mix, resulting in the oil being washed away from the animals body. The super secret ingredient in the "Dawn Power Dissolver" allows this to be done without leaving behind a soap residue. This washing process requires a lot of man-hours and large amounts of warm water. (39) Various surfactant products are easily obtained and widely used in spills both in the water and on land.
An update in April 2011 suggests that high mortality rates of bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf over the past year may be associated with the spill. Although the number of deaths last year was four times the yearly average from the previous ten years, officials are not convinced that the spill is the primary reason. Several of the dead dolphins had traces of the BP oil on them, but according to NOAA, the greater mortality rate occurred a few months before the spill. Along with an unusually high number of sea turtle deaths, it is suspected that a high incidence of algal blooms may be associated with this sudden change in death rates. (40)
The Fisheries
On April 19, 2011, according to Restore the Gulf, NOAA announced that all of the Gulf waters that were closed due to the spill, were now open to recreational and commercial fishing. Following a sampling period spanning from November to April, NOAA in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration, deemed finfish, oysters, crabs and shrimp safe to harvest. According to reports, no oil or sheen had been seen since the previous August following the spill, and tests revealing trace amounts of oil or dispersants found in the fish were one-thousand times lower than the FDA's levels of concern.(41)
Just a few months prior to this testing, local restaurants were serving freshwater crawfish instead of shrimp due to the hesitation of consumers. Shrimp boats were no longer catching shrimp because no one would by them. Many of these boats became part of the clean-up effort dragging booms instead of nets. This feeling of no turning back, was shared by several Louisiana State University scientists and their students who predicted it would be a long time before the oil disappeared from the picture. They sampled fish close to shore, knowing that many of them start their lives in the marshes and then move further offshore as they grow into adults. Their concern was that the oil and dispersants would slowly work their way into various food chains and become part of a more complex food web that stretched from shore to open waters. In addition, they shared concerns stemming from the fact that the dispersants were used at the well head, which means they may remain in the water column for extended periods of time, making it easy to penetrate the food web from many angles. (42) One can only ponder the possibility that the subtle consequences of this spill could go forever unpredicted, undetected and most likely unproven.
Activity: Field Trip/Visit from local company
such as Sea Support in New Haven or the nationwide company, www.cleanharbors.
Activity: The Skinny on Surfactants (Adapted from University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and Maryland Sea Grant Extension Program activity: Industrial Strength Microbes.) Students will design and conduct a scientific investigation based on their knowledge of the use of surfactants on cleaning oil from feathers.
Objectives/ Students will:
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use technology to research the various surfactants that have been used in oil removal from wildlife and gain an understanding of how they work.
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predict which of the surfactants will be most effective in removing the oil from feathers.
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design and run an experiment that will determine the effectiveness of each surfactant.
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collect and analyze data ; draw conclusions on the effectiveness of the surfactants.
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Student Materials:
The Skinny on Surfactants
In your short time on this earth, you most likely have been aware of two major oil spills that occurred off the coast of North America. The first one involved the grounding of the oil tanker,
Exxon Valdez,
off the coast of Prince William Sound in 1989. The more recent and closer to home spill occurred in April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. Much was learned from the spill associated with the
Valdez
including how to deal with the thousands of birds and mammals that were covered in oil from the spill. Advances in Biotechnology were key in developing products that would be used to save wildlife from slow, cruel deaths. Time and the efforts of volunteers were crucial in rescuing and treating afflicted animals before they died of exposure due to the loss of insulating and waterproofing abilities, caused by being coated in oil. Surfactants of all types started to pop up from companies all over the world. They work in the similar way in which Dawn dish detergent cuts the grease in your dishwater at home. In fact, you have probably seen the commercials boasting the role of Dawn dish detergent in cleaning animals that were victims of oil spills.
Your task is to determine the effectiveness of various surfactants on the removal of oil from bird feathers
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First, you should conduct any research you think is necessary to learn about how surfactants work and the various types of surfactants available, including Dawn dish detergent. Next, predict
what you believe will be the most effective surfactant(s) in removing the oil from the feathers backing your prediction with your research. Then, design and conduct your experiment (after getting design approval from your teacher), using any of the materials listed below. If your design calls for something not listed, ask your teacher if other materials are available. Finally, analyze your data
and report
your findings, drawing conclusions about, which of the surfactants was most effective.
Materials
Use the following outline to write a report of your findings:
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Problem statement
: Problem statement should be in the form of a question and the Independent Variable and Dependent variable should be identified.
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Prediction/Hypothesis: This should be based on research conducted before the experiment and not changed based on your results.
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Experimental Design: Written in paragraph form and detailed enough so that it may be repeated in the future. A control group should be described when applicable and all constant variables included in the procedure.
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Recording/reporting of data: Data must be provided in the form of a chart, table and or graph that is properly labeled and dated.
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Analysis/Conclusion: Analyze data and make a conclusive statement that answers the problem statement, supported by your data.
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Validity: Discuss anything about your experiment that may have made your data less valid and how your would improve on your design.
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VII.
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Recommendation/Application: Give your recommendation based on your findings. Discuss any applications other than the obvious.
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The Burn/ Acidification of the Oceans
Of course one of the more far- reaching issues with oil is its consumption as a fuel source. Most are aware of its acute and long-term effects on the environment and its inhabitants. Controlled burning techniques were used to try to remove as much of the oil from the marine environment during and after the Gulf spill. The EPA monitored the air quality for particulate matter and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). (43) Although the fires that burned as the result of the spill created temporary symptoms and concerns, our long-term concerns with burning oil should focus on climate change and the accompanying effects on the oceans.
Most of the general population, whether they believe it is happening or not, are aware of the concept of climate change. If they believe it is happening, most, when prodded, will admit that our consumption of fossil fuels has been a great contribution to global warming, caused by gases that trap the heat close to earth. They hear repeatedly about the threat of rising sea levels and gradual changes of regions based on precipitation and other climatic factors that will eventually affect where we can live and practice agriculture. What they may not be aware of is that the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result of carbon combustion is changing our oceans.
Although the chemistry of our oceans has changed over the past two hundred years, the concept of acidification of the oceans has just started to hit the headlines in magazines like
Popular Science
. According to the May 2011 issue, what was once thought of as a good thing for global warming reduction, is now taking its toll on organisms that serve as the basis of food chains in polar regions. The oceans have been considered carbon sinks, absorbing more than twenty-five percent of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Although this means that it is no longer in the air, it results in the formation of weak carbonic acid, which over time has resulted in the oceans becoming more than thirty percent more acidic. Polar snails, oysters in the Pacific Northwest and most likely other marine organisms are paying the price. Oysters die soon after spawning due to the acidic nature of the water, while other organism's shells are underdeveloped, too thin and deformed.
Is there a solution to this slowly encroaching problem? One thing is for certain, there is no quick fix. Hauke Kite-Powell, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researcher, believes that the best chance is by imposing a "carbon tax". Instead of promoting the burning of fossil fuels through lower costs than the more expensive cleaner sources, a price should be put on carbon. One prediction reduces carbon dioxide emissions by thirty percent if a $12.50 per ton of carbon dioxide tax was implemented. This would keep tons of pollution from entering the oceans, slowing down the acidification process. (44)
Long-term Study: Monitoring of pH/CO2/Alkalinity levels of New Haven Harbor/Long Island Sound Oceanography and Freshman Aquascience and Natural Resource classes will monitor these parameters and maintain data collection for the next several years to determine if there is an acidification process taking place in Long Island Sound.
Objectives
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students will:
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Understand the connection between pH, alkalinity and carbon dioxide levels and how this relates to the potential acidification of Long Island Sound
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Collect surface and subsurface water samples with a Wildco sampling device.
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Accurately conduct chemical titrations to determine carbon dioxide and alkalinity levels.
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Successfully operate a pH meter to determine pH levels
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Successfully use a GPS to determine sampling site locations.
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Compile and analyze data collected when applicable.
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Student materials:
Monitoring Acidity Levels of Long Island Sound
The acidity levels of the worlds oceans have been slowly changing. We know this by measuring pH levels. pH is the measure of positive hydrogen ions and negative hydroxide ions in water. If these ions are present in equal amounts, the water should be neutral with a pH of 7. If there are more hydrogen ions it will be acidic. (Less than 7) A greater concentration of hydroxide ions will make it basic. (Greater than 7) For most aquatic organisms, the ideal pH levels should fall between 6 and 9. Any levels outside of this range could cause stress for the organisms and prevent them from properly growing or reaching sexual maturity, preventing them from reproducing.
Carbon Dioxide levels play a role in the pH of bodies of water on earth. When carbon dioxide dissolves in water, it creates a weak carbonic acid. Carbon dioxide and pH levels can vary based on the time of day and fluctuating inputs. For instance, during darkness, you would expect carbon dioxide levels to rise while animals are going through respiration, but decrease during sunlight hours when plants use it during photosynthesis. Scientists are looking at the overall increase in ocean acidity levels, (Lower pH), due to vast amounts of carbon dioxide entering waters through atmospheric pollutants from the burning of fossil fuels.
Alkalinity is another parameter that ties into ocean acidification. Alkalinity is the ability of a body of water to buffer against an excess of hydrogen ions therefor preventing the build up of acids and a resulting drop in pH. Salt water generally has a greater natural ability to act as a buffer than fresh water.
Area environmental groups and scientists have concerns about whether or not this acidification process is taking place in Long Island Sound and what effects it could have on the shellfish and crustaceans that inhabit the waters. You and your classmates will be pioneers in a long- term study that will involve monitoring pH, alkalinity and carbon dioxide levels in Long Island Sound. Data will be compiled for the next several years to determine whether or not there is a trend of acidification in the Sound.
Materials:
Sampling and testing protocol:
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Prepare apparatus and equipment for sampling/testing/recording data
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Submit float plan to main office/water-front safety officer
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Put on Personal Flotation Devices/board science vessel
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Pilot to sampling location(s)/enter location in GPS and mark location
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Take a surface sample with the bucket and a bottom sample with the Wildco Bottle
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Perform three carbon dioxide titrations and three alkalinity titrations on each sample
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Use the pH meter to test the pH of the samples
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Record all data on provided data sheets.
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Chart sampling location(s) on chart of Long Island Sound
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Transfer all data to spread sheet in all access folder
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Testing will be repeated several times throughout the year. Can you think of any strategies in terms of determining where and when(time of day) to sample? Explain your reasoning.