Helen K White Lab

fieldtrip top 10:

1] the birds especially herons, pelicans, osprey, 2] southern accents, 3] our buick and it’s reverse facing camera and robot like tendencies, 4] new sites, 5] more oil, 6] beach clean-up crews, 7] outside showers, 8] radio stations that equal our pulse, 9] squeaky soft sand, 10] surf.

in photos:

Having reached a breaking point in my microbial work (we’re getting ready to send off 16S samples of deep-sea sediment microbial extracts for sequences!) I’ve been getting progressively more excited about our impending trip down to the gulf. The 6:30am departure on the morning of June 26th bodes for a groggy start, but it also means we will have most of the day ahead of us to collect samples. I’ve been preparing for the trip by helping to pack the sampling suitcase and planning our culinary stops. You might be thinking “do you really have to plan where to grab some lunch or dinner?” The answer is, when you’ve got a schedule planned out like hours which involves traveling and sampling for 99% of the day, knowing reasonable dinner spots that are open late and located en route to the next destination is key!

Pat and Helen came back with an impressive 11o samples to analyze, and now we’re all wondering – how much more are we going to find? We have some new sampling sites in mind that we hope we’ll have time to visit, and plans to return to previous sites too. This will be my first trip south of North Carolina, and I’m excited to experience the deep south and observe first-hand the effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on the coastal US. And since Helen has been priming me with descriptions of the local marine and coastal wildlife, I am possibly most excited for the possibility of spotting dolphin pods, stingrays, herons and more! I may be a little distracted from tar bar sampling… But regardless, 110 is the number to beat!

With three of us blogging over trip 2, you’ll get the full scoop of our adventure!

Possible distraction in the gulf- dolphins!

Ooooooh shells! And tar balls of course

Summer research is in full swing and we are very happy to welcome Ben and Reena from Villanova University to our lab. Ben and Reena are working on a project with Adam Langley investigating what happens when oil from spills washes up on coast lines and interacts with salt marsh ecosystems. A quick google image search will give you an indication of what is on our minds these days. Ben and Reena are in the lab for a few weeks to look at the oil fraction of their experiments and try to determine how biodegraded it is. With an oil spill as large as the BP Deepwater Horizon spill,  there are numerous environments that need to be examined. There’s the surface ocean, the deep-sea, the nearshore, the coastal zone, the atmosphere, the fish, the birds, the corals etc… Sometimes these investigations seem endless. There still is plenty of work to do. Scientists have been examining the effects of the spill from the first few days until today and will continue to do so into the future. More info on the research investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, can be found here.

Ben & Reena

Today our samples arrived back in lab. We shared our findings with Liz and introduced her to tar balls of all shapes, sizes and smells. Let the analysis begin!

Pat categorizing tar balls

I felt that the final words of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Return of the King spoken by Mr. Samwise Gamgee were an appropriate closing to our first voyage to the Gulf.  Like our hobbit friends we departed Haverford blissfully ignorant of certain worldly facts and have returned as seasoned adventures full of knowledge.  We can now easily identify tar balls and oil scraping at distance, we can safely navigate bayou roads, and we have learned (through trial and error) just exactly why sunscreen is important.

The first trip was amazing.  The scenery was wild, the work fun, and the end result is 110 samples begging to be analysed.  I see no reason to deny them.  This week will be spent cataloguing and setting our plan of attack.  While sitting comfortably in the lab, far removed from the Gulf, it seems necessary to offer some retrospective words of commentary concerning our work, the people we met, and what we hope to do better next time.

What struck me most down in the Gulf was how much oil was still washing up on beaches two years after the spill.  While it’s true that beaches are no longer being swamped with oil, pounds of sand patties are washing up on Gulf beaches every day.  Admittedly these patties are not the kitchen table sized monstrosities of two years ago, but they are there nonetheless.  While we were there we talked with a lot of people.  Some were happy to chat, others less so.  We heard opinions ranging from “there was oil already on the beaches, what’s a little more,” to extremely explicit observations of how Gulf life is forever changed.  For the most part though people just wanted to share their own oil spill story.

Next trip we hope to hit some other spots that were hit pretty hard by the spill.  We are looking at beaches that have already been cleaned and some that have not.  This should give us a good profile of oil that has been sitting out on the sand for a long time and oil fresh from the water.  We want to thank the Haverford KINSC for their generous funding of these trips.  Here’s to more fun in the sun next week!

To celebrate the 110 samples that Pat and I collected, we went to Mr. Ronnie’s famous hot donuts, which were highly recommended to us by Chris Reddy. It did not disappoint. On Pat’s first bite of the maple bacon donut he said, “I think I am going to cry”. See you soon Philadelphia.

DAY 3 – Grand Isle, LA. More tar balls and a few bug bites.

Day three brought us deep into the Bayou.  I had always been told that most of the Louisiana coast is below sea level and constantly at risk of just going underwater, but I only really understood after our drive all the way to the southern tip of Louisiana.  We spent all day in Grand Isle and Port Fourchon.  There we spent our last day of field work admiring the creative names people painted on their houses and running away from freak thunderstorms.

On Grand Isle we started in the national park but quickly relocated south to a public beach with more fruitful results.  There we spent a few hours scrambling around jetties scraping oil off blisteringly hot rocks.  After trekking a few miles farther the weather took a turn for the worse.  We had filled our last sample jar and the timing could have not been more perfect.  Just as we got back to the car the skies opened up and we found ourselves in a rather serious lightening storm.  After a lunch of Po Boys and Voodoo potato chips we headed to Elmer’s Island.

Elmer’s Island was an interesting place.  It was an area hit pretty hard by the spill and the entire beach had an air of neglect.  We found a lot of oil patties and talked with a few locals about their own experiences.  As the sun was going down we made our way back north and stopped at Voodoo BBQ for a dinner of pulled pork, brisket, collard greens, and corn pudding.  Tomorrow we will be taking stock of our mountain of samples, shipping them back to Haverford (TSA apparently does not like people shipping oil patties cross country), and catching a plane back to PA!

DAY 1 & 2: So far so good. A little sunburned and sleep deprived, but we are getting some good samples. Our fearless leader Catherine Carmichael (funded by DEEP-C) has an impressive knowledge of the area. Here’s some photos from the first two days.

That’s just from a song by The Charlie Daniel’s Band – Mom and Dad, don’t worry I will be flying home at the end of this!

Day two brought us more oil, sand, sun, and beautiful views.  We got up bright and early and caught a ferry over to Ship Island in Mississippi.  It was the amazing barrier island surrounded by birds, rays, jellyfish, (and tar balls).  There we just gave our equipment to a few enthusiastic kids playing at this resort-y place on the island and we just sat around sipping frosty drinks and frolicked with dolphins.

The rest of the day was spent on a Waveland jetty scraping oil of rocks (harder to see and do that is sounds).  There’s still a lot of Katrina dammage around and some of the drive was pretty sobering.  At the same time we also saw a lot of rebuilding, construction, and entirely new towns that are slowly bringing life back to an otherwise ravaged landscape.

We ended the day in Louisiana.  After a meal of Chinese food twice the size of any reasonable serving, we retreated to airconditioned rooms and a few hours of sleep.

Pictures on the way! (not of us sleeping, of what we are doing…)