[Coral-List] BP Oil Spill

[Eugene Shinn]

Someone just sent me the following. I think it is instructive 
information. Sorry I could not send the pdf that came with it. Gene
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>Please find herein an attachment scanned from the book "Torpedoes in the
>Gulf" by Galveston's Melanie Wiggins, published by Texas A&M University
>Press in 1995. When you open this scanned pdf, go to the tool bar and click
>View, then Rotate View, and then click counterclockwise, to more easily read
>the pages horizontally.
>
>The sheer volume of crude oil spilled by these attacks and sinkings, as well
>as more toxic gasoline and fuel oil, appears significant. Note on the map,
>the Florida tanker sinkings/spillage around Key West and up the east coast
>to Jacksonville. How did the reefs manage to survive from these spills to
>this day? Is there any research on that? Maybe NOAA knows of some.
>There are other books that chronicle the even greater sinking of tankers off
>Cape Hatteras and the Outer Banks.
>
>So far, if the 5,000 BOPD flow rate is near correct, the Horizon-Macondo
>spill is at about 110,000 barrels so far(assuming 22 days. MC 252 (Macondo)
>block location is about 50 miles from the tip of the delta, which was
>initially much farther away from the wetlands of the delta, than where
>several of these tankers sank and spilled their oily cargoes.
>
>Without knowing full details of each sunk cargo of oil from the detail in
>this book, I'd guess that at least 20 full tankers were sunk very close (see
>map) to the Louisiana wetlands and Florida beaches and reefs. That's
>probably at least 1 million barrels, and probably much more, over a 5 month
>period (May-September 1942)of U-boat focus in the Gulf. The citations of the
>three (3) tanker barrel sizes in the text pages sent herein, are combined
>about 350,000 barrels alone. By comparison to all this, the 1979 Pemex
>blowout and June 1979-March 1980 (10 month spill) is reportedly estimated at
>3 million barrels, which washed up on south Texas and northern Mexico
>beaches.

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No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
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E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
Marine Science Center (room 204)
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eshinn at marine.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158---------------------------------- 
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