ONTHEWATERFRONTONTHEWATERFRONTON


Mote Tropical Research Lab | Summerland Key | Executive Director Dr. David Vaughn


go into smaller droplets at the sur- face where it can get acted upon by bacteria not washed up on beaches. Tis was the first time ever that dis- persants were used at the source, at the wellhead and almost a mile down, so we’re not sure where most of this oil went. We’re getting some scientific results just this past month showing deep water corals within 10-15 miles of the well head being killed. And we don’t have a man vehicle in the United States that can go down and measure ob- servations.


GD:Tat’s pretty disalarming. What exactly is a dispersant? What is it made of? What are the chemi- cals? DV: A dispersant in it’s most sim-


plest form is similar to a detergent. It has a number of other solvents in it that make it easy to disperse as well as to turn these large oil layers into smaller droplets. You put a coupleof drops of Joy or something like that in it and then you see that the pan is clean but there are a lot of little oil droplets in the water of the dishwashing containers. Tat’s what happens basically with the dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico.


GD:When you say scientists are in the Gulf of Mexico doing water quality tests on the ocean floor, what are they finding? DV:Well, I want to qualify that statement first and that the scien- tists are not all out there exploring. Continued


KONK Life 13


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