Oceanography professor: oil spill already greater than Exxon Valdez

washingtonpost.com
No one is sure how much oil is leaking. The Coast Guard initially said there was no leak, then said there was a leak of 1,000 barrels a day, then upped the estimate to 5,000 barrels. Adm. Thad W. Allen, the leader of the federal response and commandant of the Coast Guard, has cautioned against putting too much credence in any estimate.

Ian MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, has calculated the amount of oil based on satellite imagery and established models of oil dispersion and believes that the quantity is already greater than that dumped in Alaska by the Exxon Valdez in 1989. He estimated last week that 9 million gallons of oil are already in the water, compared with 10.8 million gallons in the Valdez disaster.

But he acknowledged that the real amount could be different. In any case, he said, the comparison to the Valdez spill is misguided, because the coastal gulf is far more economically significant than the sparsely populated coast of Alaska. More...