Any oil that would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean is out of sight—but officials shouldn’t put it out of mind. Source: A Struggle to Check the Seafloor Around California’s Oil Spill – Pacific Standard
Monitoring the Oil As the clean-up progresses, so does our monitoring. We now have sampled an array of sites that span the region of potential impact (Gaviota to downtown Santa Barbara) and the range of observed intensity of oiling. We are now beginning to shift gears a bit to have some of our crew focus… Read more »
Federal authorities on Wednesday issued a cleanup order to the company whose underground pipeline last week spilled thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean and marred several miles of Santa Barbara County coastline. “Our action today is to make sure the oil response work continues until the Santa Barbara County coastline is… Read more »
Great to see more stories focusing on our students and their dedicated efforts as the getting out into the regular coverage of spill impacts. The two most recent of these featured some of our field sampling over the weekend. Many of the students in our field crews have been canceling things right and left. This spill… Read more »
Our teams are mustering for another field day of monitoring the ecological and social impacts of this spill. Much of the genesis of our current Sandy Beach work is grounded in our efforts to bring folks into field science who would not otherwise be engaged in a so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) discipline…. Read more »
Sandy Beaches are everything to us here in Southern California, a central pillar of both our cultural identity and economic engine. They are where we birthed surf culture (on beaches like Huntington and Surfrider), invented beach volleyball (on beaches like Manhattan Beach and Redondo), trained our young people to fight the axis powers of WWII… Read more »
The University of California’s Natural Reserve System (NRS) is an incredible network of protected areas spanning the state of California. These areas provide much needed spaces wherein researchers can study California ecosystems minimally impacted (and yes, I know that is a relative term) by our voracious appetite to burn, pave, and manipulate all we… Read more »
I was on Huffington Post Live this afternoon. I wasn’t able to finish my thought (Real Housewives were apparently on deck). But if I had, I would have noted that our clean-up technology hasn’t kept pace with our drilling/extraction technology. And that you can have all the regulations you like, but it is the government… Read more »
See our oil spill size comparison in our research section.
The oil pipeline rupture at Refugio State Beach may have spilled as much as 105,000 gallons of crude, authorities said. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Source: Santa Barbara oil spill: Pipeline operator has long record of problems – LA Times