Research never sleeps on USF ship tracking oil gusher

During its 28 years at sea, the Weatherbird II has been a fishing boat, an oil rig supply vessel, even a platform for seeding the ocean with iron filings to battle global warming.

But nothing this 115-foot ship did before compares to its new mission: unlock the mysteries of how water moves in the Gulf of Mexico to help predict the impact of the Gulf oil crisis on marine life and Florida's shores.

"Hopefully the research we do will give us a lot of answers ... and be a learning tool for the future so it doesn't happen again," said ship's captain Matt White, who worked for the Coast Guard before taking over Weatherbird II.

Last week, White ferried a research team led by University of South Florida oceanographer Jay Law on a four-day mission to help track the meandering Gulf river known as the loop current.

Crew members left port in a thunderstorm and endured 6 foot seas and 20 knot winds while conducting research day and night. The work was demanding and often dangerous as they struggled to hoist heavy equipment onto a rolling deck covered by water.

Among its tasks, the Weatherbird II delivered divers to retrieve an underwater current detector placed near Venice by a team from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

The scientists also dropped overboard a number of "drifters," resembling floating kites, which track ocean currents much like a message in a bottle. Except drifters use satellite communication.

"We had some of them in the shop and we knew they could help with the oil spill, especially as far as the loop current is concerned," Law said.

This four day trip extended as far south as Fort Myers and as far west as the eastern edge of the loop current, in 1,000 feet of water about 125 miles from Port Charlotte.

Using buoys, drifters, a new onboard sensor and all the tools at their disposal, Law and the USF Ocean Circulation Group determined it is doubtful oil will reach the coastline of the Tampa Bay area or contaminate the Florida Keys any time soon.

Still, currents change daily. That makes the work of the Weatherbird II critical.

Most of the time, the loop current flows north through the Yucatan channel, between Mexico and Cuba, then clockwise around the Gulf, into the Gulf Stream, back around the tip of Florida, and all the way up the eastern seaboard.

Lately, though, it's fractured and fickle.

Instead of a well-defined flowing river of warmer water, the loop current has devolved into a circular eddy that makes accurate flow predictions difficult.

"If the loop current were to extend farther north where it can pick up some oil from the spill, it's going to travel around the eastern portion ... and it would get into the Florida Strait," Law said.

USF purchased the Weatherbird II 18 months ago for $2.3 million to replace an older, smaller vessel called Suncoaster, which was seized in a drug bust. The bigger ship seemed like a big investment at the time, but now it looks like a bargain.

Weatherbird II is the flagship of the state's marine research fleet, a floating laboratory for a 21-member consortium of universities and research organizations operating under the auspices of the Florida Institute of Oceanography.

That work got a boost last week with a $10 million dollar research grant from British Petroleum, owner of the oil platform that exploded April 20.

Members of the consortium have until Thursday to submit proposals for research projects. Individual grants will be made for up to $200,000 each, some of which will likely be spent on Weatherbird II. The ship costs $6,000 to $8,000 a day to operate.

Another USF team aboard the Weatherbird II discovered an underwater plume of hydrocarbons from the oil gusher, running for miles at a depth of 1,300 feet. That was during the second trip the vessel made to areas near the spill.

On the first trip, Weatherbird II came within a mile of the Deepwater Horizon blowout site, where the crew observed dolphins swimming through the ooze. Crew members say oil-soaked birds landed on the ship, too, but they were powerless to help them.

The oil crisis elevates the work of the researchers, engineers and sailors on board from scientific curiosity to practical urgency.

It also has thrust their work and the Weatherbird II into the frontlines of marine science and the front pages of newspapers around the world.

"If I could make this happen all over again I'd like to drift back into obscurity and not have the oil spill," USF oceanographer Dennis Mayer said. "But things are the way they are at the moment."