In response to the 2010 British Petroleum oil spill disaster, UCLA Atmospheric and Oceanic Science professors Jeroen Molemaker and James McWillams have been awarded $2 million by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative. This three-year project seeks to understand how oil and other contaminants move in ocean currents in the Gulf, both to determine the fate of the oil from the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil spill and to improve clean-up efforts in any future spills.
“A better understanding of how tracers like oil move around in the ocean has, of course, great consequences for the environment,” noted Molemaker, the project’s principal investigator and research affiliate of UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
By elucidating the oil’s fate from the 2010 spill, this project can assist cleanup efforts for currently contaminated sites and for future oil spills. As physical oceanographers, these two researchers will go beyond simple observational techniques and will collect data across the gulf by utilizing drones, aerostats, planes, satellites, drifter releases and various other vessels.
British Petroleum, the main culprit in the 2010 Deep Horizon spill, has given the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative the funding necessary to conduct these projects throughout the Gulf of Mexico.
Learn more about the projects being undetaken by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.