The Loop, C-IMAGE Research

David Levin sits down with David Yoskowitz from the Harte Research Institute of Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M Christi to discuss the economics behind oil spill response and recovery. When oil spills are assessed through an economic viewpoint, both environmental and human impacts must be considered to provide a full picture.

The podcast gathers the perspectives of Andrew Ziegwied (ASV Global), Rick Spinrad (Oregon State University), and Susan Roberts (Ocean Studies Board Director) to see what these parallel communities can learn from one another when the next oil spill occurs.

With scientists from Cuba, Steve Murawski and David Hollander explain their goals and motivations of the first U.S. research cruise to Cuba since the 1960s. Bringing together students and scientists two countries separated by 90 miles who both study the Gulf of Mexico had many challenges, but the results of using science to connect the nations.

What happened to the fish in the days and weeks after the oil spill? With a suite of exposure studies, C-IMAGE researchers are monitoring fish health after oil exposure in order to find out. Dr. Dana Wetzel and Kevan Main of Mote Marine Laboratory give fish a small does of oil through either their food, water, or the sea floor sediments, then analyze how their bodies recover.

Listen to learn how scientists reanalyzed remotely sensed data taken in the late 1970s to study the oil spill. Dr. Chuanmin Hu and his graduate student Shaojie Sun use the Landsat and Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) data to develop "treasure maps" of oil from the IXTOC-1 spill to steer field studies. Listen in to find out how they did it.

"We were of the mind that with studying the in the northern Gulf we weren't getting a full Gulf of Mexico perspective." Geochemist David Hollander is travelling with an international team of scientists aboard a Mexican research vessel. Over the last few years, his team has studied the effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. But today, they're looking back at a spill that happened 35 years ago and what they learn on this trip might help them understand the future of the Gulf. Mind Open Media producer David Levin talks to David Hollander, Joel Ortega Ortíz, Isabel Romero, Adriana Gaytán-Caballero, and Travis Washburn about their experiences on the in the southern Gulf of Mexico during the research on the Ixtoc spill.

The oil spill happened just a few years ago, but it might be possible to predict its impact on the Gulf by studying another major spill, one that happened in 1979. Wes Tunnell and John Farrington studied the coastal impacts of the spill in Campeche Bay and apply this knowledge to the next generation of researchers studying .

High pressure experiments underway at high pressure facility at the Technical University of Hamburg focus on how microbes use oil and what happens to them in the process. Results from these studies may lead to a new way to clean up spills by eliminating its most poisonous ingredients.

Scientists from the Technical University of Hamburg, Michael Schlüter and Karen Malone, discuss their high pressure experiments ongoing at their facilities looking at oil and gas droplets under high pressure to learn more about the oil spill.

Mind Open Media's David Levin talks with C-IMAGE members Ainsworth, Lenes, Masi and Smith about building an Ecosystem Model of the Gulf of Mexico to describe how oil spills impact marine life.