WET Labs and Sea-Bird Electronics instruments find deep oil plumes

WET Labs supplied an ECO FLCD 6000 m rated fluorometer to the University of Southern Mis-sissippi on May 6th for use on the R/V Pelican. USM purchased the instrument specifically to look for crude oil. The instrument was added to the ship’s profiling package which included a SBE Conductivity/Temperature/Depth (CTD) profiler, a WET Labs transmissometer and a SBE dissolved oxygen sensor.

WET Labs supplied a ‘best practices’ document to USM that delineated how to use the CDOM fluorometer and other sensors to detect crude oil. That document is now being widely circulated.

Using the CDOM fluorometer and transmissometer the scientists aboard the Pelican were able to detect and map the extent of what is presumed to be multiple plumes of oil. The SBE and WET Labs instruments allowed them to collect samples from the plumes by identifying the depth of the plume when they tripped their sample bottles. Without our instruments the likelihood of cap-turing oil in a sample bottle is vanishingly small.

The scientists report that the oil is associated with lower dissolved oxygen indicating microbial activity in the plumes. This developing oxygen depleted zone is potentially a serious secondary impact.

The ability to track subsurface crude oil should prove invaluable in mitigating the damages from this spill and provide important lessons in developing early response methods to respond to emergencies in the future.