NOAA’s latest observations indicate that a small portion of the oil slick has reached the Loop Current in the form of light to very light sheens, according to a press release from DeepwaterHorizonResponse.com.

In the time it would take for oil to travel to the vicinity of the Florida Straits, any oil would be highly weathered and both the natural process of evaporation and the application of chemical dispersants would reduce the oil volume significantly, the joint U.S. Coast Guard-NOAA statement claims.

“However, the oil may get caught in a clockwise eddy in the middle of the gulf, and not be carried to the Florida Straits at all,” the release says.

Clearly there is a lot of uncertainty still, as is often the case in science…

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Glynn Wilson

Birds, fish and people have coexisted with oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for decades, but BP’s deadly oil slick threatens that fragile relationship.

[Click on the images for larger views]

by Glynn Wilson

GULF SHORES, Ala. — Hanging out on the beach at The Hangout Fest this past weekend, watching and listening to public officials struggle to get the word out to people to come on down and enjoy the coast since the oil spill had not made landfall here, yet, I could not help but wonder what effects the spill was having below the sea floor and in the wetlands of Louisiana, the Mississippi Delta and the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and beyond.

As a lover of shrimp and birds, I wondered what impacts the spill would have on wildlife refuges such as the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in Baldwin County and the Gulf State Park wildlife refuge in Gulf Shores, places I’ve visited many times and grown to love.

To try to get some perspective on the potential problems, I rode over to the Gulf State Park Nature Center and talked to naturalist Kelly Reetz.

“We are going to see long-term impacts in the months and years to come,” she said about the Gulf Oil Spill of 2010. “Oil is toxic to the eggs of all manner of species. We will see inevitable effects on all the species exposed to this.”

Even if all the efforts of British Petroleum were to pay off and the Deepwater Horizon oil leaks were plugged and stopped today, and even if the growing oil slick of at least 2,300 square miles remained south and west of the beaches of Alabama and Florida with help from the winds and currents, there is no escaping the effects on the Gulf ecosystem — even if a centrifuge machine bankrolled by Kevin Costner is employed to separate the oil from water in the Gulf.

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Florida Senator Bill Nelson has posted new BP videos on his website that offer new views of the gushing Deepwater Horizon oil spill leaks.

The first video offers the first views of the leaks at the blowout preventer. The image zooms in to the top of the riser and you can see multiple streams of oil gushing from this area.

The second video shows BP’s insertion tube at work, but huge quantities of oil are visible gushing past the device and up into the Gulf of Mexico.