REAL bad news if this is from the spill in the Gulf.
Tar balls retrieved from Fort Zachary State Park in Key West, Fla., is shown Monday, May 17, 2010, in this photo released by the U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday, May 18, 2010.
"Coast Guard investigates reports that more tar balls found in Florida Keys
KEY WEST
The Coast Guard was checking reports that more tar balls were found in the Florida Keys on Tuesday, a day after 20 of them were found off Key West.
Tar balls were reported on the beach in Big Pine Key at 8 a.m., Smathers Beach in Key West at 8:20 a.m., and on Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas National Park at 9 a.m., according to the Coast Guard.
Twenty tar balls were found off Key West on Monday. They are being tested by the Coast Guard to see if they came from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill or elsewhere.
Tar balls can occur naturally or come from other sources, such as ships.
The Coast Guard said the Keys beaches remain open. Crews are checking the shorelines of Key West and Big Pine Key, and a helicopter is surveying the scene from the air.
University of South Florida scientists are forecasting that oil from the spill off Louisiana could reach Key West by Sunday.
The researchers said Tuesday that the southern arm of the massive spill has entered or is near the so-called loop current, which circulates in the Gulf and takes water south to the Florida Keys and the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream could eventually take the oil up Florida's Atlantic coast.
Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says aerial surveys show some tendrils of light oil close to or already in the loop current. But most of the oil is dozens of miles away from the current.
Lubchenco says it will take about eight to 10 days after oil enters the current before it begins to reach Florida.
The Coast Guard reported that Monday's tar balls were found along the shore at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park in Key West. Samples of the tar balls — found by park rangers and ranging in size from 3 inches to 8 inches in diameter — will be sent to a Connecticut laboratory for analysis, according to the Coast Guard."
Continued at:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...,2331747.story
and
"Park rangers discovered 20 ''tar balls'' on a Key West shore and spotted oil residue farther west in the Dry Tortugas Tuesday, stirring fear that the first sign of the massive BP oil spill had washed up on a Florida shore.
The Coast Guard urged calm and sent samples of the three- to eight-inch flattened tar balls for lab analysis in Groton, Conn., to determine whether the hazardous waste was from the massive leak in the Gulf of Mexico or perhaps oil remnants from a passing ship.
``There is no proof or reason to believe these tar balls are from the Gulf at this point,'' said Coast Guard Lt.j.g. Anna K. Dixon, adding that analysis of the tar balls' origins would not be complete before day's end.
Still, the discovery stirred fears of a financial fallout -- stoked all the more by a fishing ban in 19 percent of the Gulf of Mexico, plus a grim new tracking map that graphically predicted a black oil slick encircling the Florida peninsula in 10 days.
``While I always hope for the best, this is looking like really out-of-control bad,'' Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson said about fresh research by the University of South Florida College of Marine Science in St. Petersburg.
The team predicted the Deepwater Horizon's slick would reach the Keys by this weekend -- and Miami next week.
In the Keys, however, a midday survey found a second ``oil residue'' sighting at Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas, said Larry Perez, information officer for Everglades National Park.
Loggerhead is home to a well-known lighthouse in the popular if remote tourist destination -- about 70 miles west of Key West and far closer to the Gulf of Mexico.
Perez said a U.S. Coast Guard team was flying to the island to inspect the shoreline. It was not immediately known when the oil residue was spotted, or whether it was the kind of tar balls found at Fort Zachary Taylor.
Read more:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/1...-over-tar.html "
Roffs identified oil spill plume by the loop current in satellite imagery as far back as
2 weeks ago. That might explain the arrival of tar balls around now.
More at:
http://www.marlinmag.com/news/news/r...000082714.html