Winds, currents keep massive oil slick from shore, for now

US: Favorable winds and currents have kept the bulk of a massive offshore oil slick from reaching the fragile wetlands and sandy beaches of the US Gulf Coast for more than three weeks, experts said.

But landfall is inevitable given the sheer volume of crude still gushing out of the wreckage of a BP-leased rig, as is damage to marine life and the subsea ecosystem.

“It’s going to be bad,” said biologist Dennis Takahashi-Kelso, who was Alaska’s commissioner of environmental conservation at the time of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

A big fear is that the oil will get into the fast-moving “loop current” which carries water from the Gulf of Mexico through the Florida Keys and up to North Carolina before heading out into the Atlantic.

The winds that have kept the oil away from the current are forecast to shift on Wednesday or Thursday, said Steven Morey, who is helping to track the spill.

If the oil gets into the loop current it will reach Florida in a matter of days, but it’s not yet clear how much will end up having to be mopped up off the beaches.“It brings back the classic argument of decades ago that the solution of pollution is dilution,” said Morey, of the University of Florida’s Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies.

Some of the oil will simply evaporate. Some will be skimmed or burned off the surface by cleanup crews. Some is being broken down by chemical dispersants. Some will be eaten by microbes. Some will sink to the bottom. “We don’t expect the oil to stay as concentrated,” Morey told AFP. “It would be broken up and diffused and dispersed.

 New Orleans, Louisiana, AFP