A crew of university researchers Friday began an eight-day mission designed to study the depths of the northern Gulf of Mexico amid reports of a possible underwater plume of crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
While the 224-foot Gordon Gunter ship lurked about 20 nautical miles from the site of the April 20 oil rig explosion, the unmistakable sight of oil -- a shiny, brownish ribbon of goo -- floated atop the still, cloudy Gulf waters.
Federal officials and scientists alike said it's too early to determine whether any large quantities of oil have plumed beneath the Gulf's surface.
"That's what we're out here to look for," said Russell Brown, chief scientist of the mission launched by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce. "We're not going to jump to any conclusions. We're going to sample in an unbiased way."
Aboard the Gordon Gunter ship, Brown and his team sent various testing sensors beneath the Gulf surface while circling the explosion site at a healthy distance, while BP continued to perform its topkill procedure to try to control the well.
The Gunter crew met with reporters invited by NOAA to observe the testing, which included an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle: a yellow torpedo-shaped device nicknamed "The Gulper."
The Gulper can collect several water samples at extreme depths while the crew monitors it from aboard the Gunter, which also was conducting acoustical and optical tests below the water with other remote-controlled devices.
"What you're trying to build is a body of evidence to demonstrate that what you're looking at is submerged crude oil," Brown said.
The Gunter's scientific crew includes researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the University of New Hampshire; a water chemist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; and a toxicologist from the Environmental Protection Agency.
On Friday afternoon, several crew members were bent over computer monitors that tracked the testing vessels inside a room filled with high-tech gear.
NOAA Lt. Commander Damien Bailey said the facts aren't yet in, let alone analyzed. "There's not a big ball of oil underneath," Bailey told reporters during a three-hour workboat ride from Venice to the Gulf. "People have this idea that the subsurface is filled with a big black ball of death. We haven't seen anything like that."
Bailey said he is not trying to minimize the impact of oil spill, the largest in U.S. history.
But "some things haven't been made very clear," he said, downplaying questions about whether an oil plume may exist deep in the Gulf.
"We don't have any evidence so far that that's happened," Bailey said. "The oil is very light. This whole event is very different from the Exxon Valdez. This is very light crude, close to a diesel fuel. You're not seeing gallons of oil on the surface or below. There is a lot happening to the oil that is in our favor. We're expecting to see a lot if evaporate."
Gwen Filosa can be reached at email@example.com or 504.826.3304.