GCRL Oil Spill Seminar Series coincides with Deepwater Horizon 5th Anniversary
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 01:08pm | By: Martha Brown
The University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory (GCRL) will host a seminar series, “Deepwater Horizon: A scientist's perspective,” which will begin on April 20, the fifth anniversary of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Deepwater Horizon spill occurred some 42 miles off the coast of Louisiana and is said to be the worst in U.S. history. Estimates of the amount of oil spilled range from 3-5 million barrels. Eleven rig employees lost their lives during the explosion and subsequent sinking of the rig. The leaking oil well was not capped until July 15, 2010, 87 days after the incident.
This seminar series offers a retrospective exploration of the spill through presentations by research staff and discussions among speakers, education staff and attendees to answer pressing questions. The series will be introduced with an interactive session to present a broad overview of research areas with general results and how these studies exemplify the process of science in building new knowledge. Attendees will be invited to submit their questions for later speakers. Later sessions will feature researchers sharing results from across their fields of expertise through interactive presentations.
April 20, 2015 Spill Science Five Years Later: Addressing your questions with science
Dr. Jessie Kastler, Coordinator of Program Development, Marine Education Center, GCRL, USM
May 11, 2015 Oil and Dispersants: Where are they now and what have they done?
Dr. Joe Griffitt, Associate Professor, Department of Coastal Science & GCRL, USM
Dr. Vernon Asper, Professor, Department of Marine Science, USM
June 1, 2015 Oil spill impacts on Gulf animals: How are they doing?
Dr. Frank Hernandez, Assistant Professor, Department of Coastal Sciences & GCRL, USM
Dr. Ruth Carmichael, Senior Marine Scientist II, Dauphin Island Sea Lab & Associate
Professor of Marine Sciences, University of South Alabama
June 22, 2015 Gliders in the Gulf: Ocean technology and the oil spill
Dr. Oscar Schofield, Professor, Institute of Marine and Coastal Science, Rutgers University
July 13, 2015 Where Do We Go from Here? Future directions in oil spill research
Dr. Monty Graham, Interim Director of GCRL & Professor and Chair of Marine Science, USM
These seminars will be free of charge and the public is encouraged to attend. They will be held at 6:00 pm Mondays in the Caylor Auditorium on the GCRL campus, for directions please go to: http://www.usm.edu/gcrl/about_us/location.php . To reserve your seat please register for the seminar(s) you plan on attending: https://campscui.active.com/orgs/UniversityofSouthernMississippiMEC
The sponsoring partners for this seminar series include CONCORDE, a multi-university oil spill research team and its sponsor the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI), and the Mississippi Alabama Sea Grant Consortium (MASGC).
