ROFFS Oil Tracking Shows BP Gulf Oil Spill Traveling Up Entire East Coast Of Florida

As in previous cases where independent monitoring of the BP Gulf Oil Spill has shown oil out side of the areas officially reported by NOAA it appears that this is the case once again.

Take for example the ROFFS project which uses a combination of methods to monitor the spread of the BP Gulf Oil Spill.

ROFFS™ Oil Oceanographic Analyses we have been monitoring the surface, as well as the suspected and apparent subsurface oil-water-dispersant mixture from satellite data derived from NOAA_AVHRR and Metop_A – AVHRR (infrared), MODIS (infrared, ocean color, and RGB) and MERIS (ocean color and visible) sensors, as well as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) with a variety of resolutions and spectra). We also use on-site reports from fishermen, other vessels of opportunity, and researchers (academic and government). We track the water-oil-dispersant mixture that originated from the Deepwater Horizon well site from the first day of the spill by following the water masses that originated from the spill site.

Time and again ROFFS monitoring has shown oil outside of Government reported locations and the project continues to do a much better job of tracking the BP Gulf Oil Spill than the Federal Government in hopes they will be awarded a contract to monitor the spill.

The RV Walton Smith also found oil where we had suggested it would likely to occur during the June 5-9, 2010 cruise. This was oil that had not been mapped on any official government product that were publically available and in a location where we believed that there would be a mixture of oil, dispersants, and water. From the forgoing information we feel that our techniques in following water masses using our sequential image analysis technique have been validated for tracking the water masses originating from the Deepwater Horizon spill site, as well as, mapping surface oil. These are some of the same techniques that we have been using for years in our fishing forecasting and our ship routing business.

The latest ROFFS latest tracking map, released on June 22nd, shows oil extending into the Florida keys and has marked a possible water oil mixture (WOM) extending up the entire east coast of Florida.

On June 23rd, a day after ROFFS released the June 22nd map, the Dean of the University of South Florida confirmed concentrations of oil off the coast of Jacksonville Florida where ROFFS tracking indicated a possible water oil mixture.

Since the confirmed and possible WOM locations aren’t immediately clear the WOM locations are marked here here in blue.

Here is the original ROFFS BP Gulf Oil Spill Tracking Map for June 22, 2010 (Click to view full size)

Read in full blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/06/26/roffs-oil-tracking-shows-bp-gulf-oil-entire-east-coast-florida/