USF officials draw ire of NOAA over oil spill research

Bill Hogarth hopes the "us versus them'' mentality is over.

When University of South Florida researchers stood before television cameras and the world in May to announce they had found evidence of vast plumes of invisible undersea oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the dean of the College of Marine Science didn't get kudos from federal officials.

Instead, Hogarth said, he got grief from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"They were concerned about the data and wanted to know if we were sure of what we were saying,'' Hogarth said this morning. "They felt we were making statements that were not substantiated.''

That wasn't the case at all, the dean said. And today, even as the gusher in the Gulf has been capped, he wouldn't change a thing that he and his researchers did.

"We had taken every precaution to make sure what we did was right. As a university, we need to inform the people,'' said Hogarth, himself a former NOAA employee of 16 years. "We reacted quickly and did what we thought was right and best.''

On Monday, Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of NOAA, met with Hogarth and some USF scientists to try to get on the same page. Hogarth described the meeting as productive and said it was something that should have occurred a long time ago.

Hogarth is confident the two sides can work together to share information and help determine the long-term impact of the oil in the Gulf. He and others say that things have improved in their work with NOAA.

But it hasn't always been that way.

"One thing that bothered me is it has seemed it has been the federal scientists versus academia,'' the dean said. "That's not good for anyone. There's a place for both of us.''

USF officials aren't the only ones who have drawn the ire of NOAA.

Samantha Joye, professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, had a similar experience when she started talking about what she and others had discovered underwater.

"We felt like our wrists were slapped a little bit when we came forward and talked about the plumes,'' Joye said. "NOAA wanted a vetted, concrete story. We felt we had a concrete story. The plumes were real; the data was very solid.''

Joye is critical of the one-way flow of information that she said has plagued the effort. She said university researchers give plenty of data to NOAA or the Unified Command, but very little comes the other way.

"That is bothersome to me,'' she said. "Everybody needs to be sharing data.''

Joye said she also is puzzled why NOAA won't begin checking for submerged methane gases in the deep waters of the Gulf - something she said her studies have proven exist.

"It seems crazy,'' she said. "There is no reasonable explanation as to why it's not being done. It just doesn't make sense.''

Hogarth said the scope of the disaster was one factor that made it difficult for people from various institutions - government or universities - to work together.

"It got to be such a massive event,'' Hogarth said. "It pitted people against each other. I am hoping we have learned a lot from it.''

Ian MacDonald, a biological oceanographer at Florida State University, faults NOAA for not taking advantage of the vast educational resources that made up the state's oil spill academic task force. That group was created soon after the oil started spewing into the Gulf.

"I would have thought there would have been a close working relationship,'' MacDonald said. "We formed the task force to make our expertise available to anyone who needed it. Nobody at NOAA took us up on our offer.''

The FSU professor said it was ironic that NOAA talked of underwater oil in its report last week that said much of the oil could be accounted for.

"They were quite critical and they specifically challenged the veracity of their methods,'' MacDonald said of NOAA's rebuking of USF efforts. "They questioned the whole possibility. And yet that is what they say in their report.

"That's kind of too little, too late after they have slammed the scientists who were pointing this out quite rightly,'' the researcher added. "I have no idea what the politics of this are, but in terms of the science, this is irresponsible.''