This Dude Gets It

Tony Thompson. American. Farmer. Minnesotan. Cajun?

Tony owns a farm in southwest Minnesota. Runoff from his land eventually enters the Mississippi River - as does the runoff from 33 states and 2 Canadian provinces - carrying with it fertilizer, pesticides, dirt, and a butt load of nitrogen. Channeled by levees that prevents the river from depositing its "sediment" in wetlands along the coast of southeast Louisiana, Tony's farm detritus flows out the bird's foot delta of the Mississippi River into the Gulf where it forms a massive hypoxic - i.e., no dissolved oxygen - zone that creates suicidal shrimp among other resource oddities/tragedies.



But Tony is changing his ways to help his Gulf Coast "neighbors." Read about it in an interesting, albeit lengthy, article here.

Skip the article if you must, but at least check out the slide show.

Another human/environmental interest piece about the Gulf. The overarching moral here might be that we're all connected to the Gulf and it's coasts whether for fossil fuels, seafood, protein, or the crap we dump in rivers. Bring on the Pulitzer.

Where did all the oil go?

Pictured: Two scientists. Pretty boring stuff, right? I received this image via email earlier this week. My inbox is full of some really exciting stuff.

But what these two men and the rest of their team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) discovered is actually pretty serious. Using a portable mass spectrometer attached to a small autonomous underwater vehicle - think flux capacitor attached to the Delorean piloted remotely by Doc and Marty - WHOI scientists discovered a 1.2 mile-wide, 650-foot tall, 22-mile long plume of "trapped hydrocarbons" (aka oil) sitting about 3,000 miles below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. It is believed that all of the oil is residual from the failed Deep Water Horizon well.

Now I don't know how much oil in barrel or gallon terms exists in a 1.2 mile by 650 foot by 22 mile plume, but it seems like a lot. I also don't know where oil floating 3,000+ feet below the surface winds up, but I am sure it's not good for beaches, shrimp, tuna, or wetlands and I am sure it's not recoverable for use in Phil's Subaru. Whatever the case, bad news all around.

This graphic gives a good idea of what this mess looks like now.



Once again, TCD brings its readership breaking news and ground breaking commentary. Yawn. Now where's the Pulitzer already?!?

Former Coworker Drops Knowledge Bombs on CNN

Continuing TCD's award winning coverage of the Gulf oil spill, we present to you further mitigation advice courtesy of G. Paul Kemp of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. C9 worked closely with G. on coastal wetland restoration in southeast Louisiana and spent a memorable few days touring the Atchafalaya River basin with him and a dude named Captain Cajun Jack. But that's a different story.

Read Dr. Kemp's CNN opinion piece here about how better management of Mississippi River floodwater control can help keep the oil slick from creeping further up into Louisiana's wetlands.