At 3:25 PM July 15, 2010, after 85 days of spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, the BP well has finally been successfully capped and the flow has been stopped.

For now, anyway.  We hope and pray the cap and the well bore both hold up to the pressure.  Now we just have to face the long cleanup process and brace ourselves for the long wait to see just how much long-term damage may have been done by the combination of crude oil accidentally spilled and toxic dispersents purposely poured into the Gulf of Mexico by BP and their partners.

Click Image To View or Print Larger Version

NMFS has scaled back the closed area by a significant amount for the first time since this whole fiasco began.  Hopefully things will continue to move in the direction they have in the past week.. To see the closure, as well as other predictions and views, overlaid on a google map,  click here.

Spill and Closure Overlaid on Google Earth

We hope we are now on the road to recovery and hope that the long term effects of this huge amount of toxic materials released into and sprayed on the Gulf of Mexico are not as bad as many scientists fear they will be.  Time will tell.  For now, NMFS has reopened a significant portion of our fishing grounds, everything below "the 27 line" is back open again, giving much of the Florida based bottom fishing fleet some room to work.  Now if they can just find some fish and get a weather break, we can start the healing process.

Click Image To View or Print Larger Version

ROFF'S Weekly Image Updates

Roffer's Ocean Fishing Forecasting Services announced on June 3, 2010 that they will no longer be releasing daily satellite views of the oil. They have still been releasing them weekly and their latest image is one using information from June 22, 2010.

Note: In the ROFF's image, "WOM" means "water and oil mix".

Click Image To View or Print Larger Version

It is hard to visualize the scope of this spill and this disaster if you don't live on the Gulf.  This tool may help.  Put your city and state (or any other) into the box at the top of this page.

Well, this was productive.  Tony Hayward did indeed face an angry Committee of Energy and Commerce today (6/16/10) as promised.

"Mr. Hayward, let me just say with all due respect: I, like everyone else here, and everyone else in America, [am] thoroughly disgusted. I think you're stalling, I think you're insulting our intelligence and I really resent it."
Representative Eliot Engel

He didn't answer any questions of any substance and spent most of the day lying and denying, as usual, but he did show up and admit that yes, it was indeed Thursday.  Video after the jump.

We reprint this article with the kind permission of Nils Stolpe, a man who has been writing about fishing and fishermen and the issues challenging us for some time.  His writing is always excellent and well researched and he is one of the best advocates fishermen have.

His website, FishNet is here and his Blog is here.  Both are well worth bookmarking and reading regularly.

Where'd The Precautionary Principle Go?

Nils E. Stolpe
Fishnet USA
June 10, 2010

For over a decade the precautionary principle has been the mantra used by anti-fishing “conservation” organizations and federal fisheries managers in their relentless efforts to get recreational, commercial and party/charter fishermen off the water. Most simply, the precautionary principle states that when there is any doubt about the accuracy of the data propping up a proposed management action, assume the worst and manage accordingly. Thus, if the estimate of a stock of fish is in the range of 75,000 to 125,000 metric tons (plus or minus 25% would be doing really well considering the average stock assessment), the managers should assume that the lower figure is accurate and set catch parameters as if it were. No allowance for fishermen’s on-the-water observations, no allowance for common sense or intuition, no allowance for “anecdotal” observations; just go with the lowest possible estimate regardless of the costs to the affected fishing communities.

Needless to say, this forced and arbitrary conservatism has unnecessarily cost fishermen and the businesses that depend on them untold millions of dollars and untold thousands of jobs (lest there be any doubt about this, the current “realignment” in the management of the New England groundfish fishery and the imminent closure of all bottom fishing off the coasts of Northeast Florida and Georgia - and the billions of dollars of direct and indirect economic impacts of these arbitrary actions on fishermen and fishing related businesses - have many people on the East Coast on the verge of active revolt against today’s fisheries management regime.)

Jane Lubchenco was one of the outspoken proponents of the precautionary principle, at least when applied to fishing and used to punish fishermen, in her past employ as a foundation subsidized researcher and “conservation community” leader and now in her role as the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency in charge of regulating fisheries in federal waters.

Yet when it comes to non-fishing activities, or at least to non-fishing activities involving Big Oil, Ms. Lubchenco’s commitment to the precautionary principle is nowhere near as well developed. In fact, it appears that it is virtually non-existent.

After the way BP ignored and flaunted the last deadline given them by the EPA I'm not sure how much value there is in this one, but the USCG has told them to develop a better plan for containment and clean up and has told them to do it very soon.

According to CBS and the AP:

BP has 72 hours to provide plans to develop a longer-term and multi-faceted containment strategy for the crude spewing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, complete with contingency plans if a method of collection fails, according to a letter sent from the U.S. Coast Guard to the company.

The letter says, in part:

Now that the so-called “top hat” containment system has begun to capture and recover some of the oil escaping from the wellhead, it is imperative that you put equipment, systems and processes in place to ensure that the remaining oil and gas flowing can be recovered, taking into account safety, environmental and meteorological factors.

You can read the letter in full here 

The Government is also working on keeping BP's feet to the fire as far as paying claims in a timely manner  USCG Admiral Thad Allen has sent a letter to BP CEO Hayward demanding more detail and openess in the claims handling process and reminding Hayward that his company "is accountable to the American public for the economic loss caused by the oil spill."

You can read that letter in full here.

Information in this article came from an article on CBS News website.  The full article about both these letters on the CBS News website is here.