Dockwatch and Oil Spill Response

How can we help State and Federal Agencies know where to place oil booms?
Much is unknown about where along Alabama’s shoreline floating oil will arrive and how it will accumulate. With enough time and money, oceanographers could release thousands of drifters offshore and observe where the wash up. But since we don’t have the luxury of time, we CAN use naturally occurring drifters!

The oil spill coincided with a time when two offshore jellyfish species are quite numerous and very widespread across the northern Gulf of Mexico. The Portuguese Man-O-War (Physalia physalis) and the By-the-Wind-Sailor (Velella velella), and the seaweed Sargassum float at the sea surface and will begin washing onto our shores well in advance of the oil.

Want to help? Here’s how!
We need very specific observations (what? When? Where?) of these three groups. If you have the opportunity, and maybe even have access to a handheld GPS, walk the beach, kayak the marshes, look around the sea walls and jetties and record these observations. If you see them, submit your observation to the special web page that follows.

Also, if you see what you think are tarballs, let us know about those, too!

IMPORTANT!!! BE SAFE! Do not pick up tarballs! Even though they have low toxicity, let the people trained to handle them do their job. Also, PLEASE, PLEASE be careful… do not walk out on jetties or do anything that might hurt you or the environment we are trying to protect. Don’t walk on dunes or through bird nest areas, take water and use common sense! If you don’t know, just ask someone who does.

Submit washed up Jelly/Tarball observation

Good luck!
DockWatch at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab