Initial Observations from the NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson

NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson returned to Galveston, Texas, from an eight-day research mission to investigate the presence and distribution of subsurface oil from the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. The mission collected water samples for chemical analysis and tested the feasibility of using acoustic and flourometric scanning to help find potential pockets of subsurface oil clouds. The science team onboard included researchers from NOAA, EPA, the University of New Hampshire and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.