PNJ

UPDATE: 10:45 a.m.

A tar mat on a beach in the National Seashore's Fort Pickens area is larger than first thought.

A Coast Guard-led cleanup crew thought the mat was getting lighter on Saturday, but they found another large area on Sunday.

As of the conclusion of work on Sunday, approximately 1,250 pounds of material has been collected, said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Natalie Murphy, in charge of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response.

"We're scheduled to work again today, though the weather may not cooperate," she said.

National Park team diving for BP oil

Murphy said it's really hard to know how much is out there since it's not visible. Crews will continue to dig around the perimeter and out into the water to make sure they collect all of it — for however long it takes.

Seashore Superintendent Dan Brown said he's not surprised the mat surfaced, based on the number of tar balls that frequently washed up along the stretch of the beach.

"This is one of those areas we knew had some problems, some buried oil, and it's not just always visible," Brown said.

That's the been the ongoing of challenge of finding submerged oil, he said.

"With the continually moving sand, it's visible today and not visible tomorrow," he said.

Discovery of the mat underscores the need for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection monitors to routinely survey the beach after BP ended survey and cleanup patrols in 2013, citing the cost benefits of keeping the teams on the beaches when they were only finding a dwindling smattering of tar balls did not make sense.

"The state got money from BP to do continued monitoring out there," he said. "If they (monitor) had not walked that section of beach on that day, and walked it Saturday, they would not have seen it."

Previous story

A U.S. Coast Guard pollution investigation team is leading another day of cleanup of a tar mat discovered Friday on the beach at Fort Pickens.

So far, the team has removed about 960 pounds of the mat, which is about 8 to 10 feet off the shoreline in the Gulf of Mexico, just east of Langdon Beach, Coast Guard spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Natalie Murphy said

Mats are made of weathered oil, sand, water and shells.

Monday marks the fourth anniversary of when the oil from the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster finally arrived on waves slicking our beaches. Tar balls and a frothy brownish-orange petroleum product called mousse, however, arrived earlier that month.

The mat was discovered on Friday by a Florida Department of Environmental Protection monitor who surveys area beaches routinely looking for lingering BP oil.

"The weather plays such a big factor in this," said Murphy. "Friday we got the cleanup crew out there and could see it (tar mat) visibly and attacked it. Then the thunderstorms came in, and they had to stop."

By the time the crew returned Saturday, the mat was reburied under 6 inches of sand, and it took the crew a while to relocate it using GPS coordinates taken Friday, she said.

With the mat located in the surf zone, it's harder to clean up.

"It's always a battle with Mother Nature," Murphy said.

The team returned today and plans to return Monday and for as many days as it takes to excavate the entire mat with shovels, although Murphy said it appears by the smaller amount excavated today they may be getting close to collecting all of it.

But the team will survey about 100 yards east and west of the mat to make sure none is still buried in the sand.

This mat is located about half a mile east of where a mat containing 1,400 pounds of weathered oil was cleaned up in March.

Cleanup is being conducted by a joint effort between BP, the Coast Guard, Florida Department of Environmental Protection and National Park Service.

It will take about a week for test results to confirm whether the oil is from the Macondo well that exploded April 20, 2010.

More than 200 million gallons of crude oil spewed into the Gulf in 2010 for a total of 87 days before the Macondo well head could capped, making it the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Ironically, the discovery of the near-shore mat comes at a time when the National Park Service has stepped up efforts to search out suspected tar mats farther offshore.

Mats are believed to be submerged in the Gulf of Mexico waters off the seashore's Fort Pickens and Johnson beach areas.

Since April, a specialized team of underwater archaeologists has been scanning the waters looking for areas that might have trapped oil when it began washing up on our beaches four years ago on Monday.

Friday's discovery is not related to the dive team's hunt for oil, although the Coast Guard is testing several samples the team discovered to see if it is oil and, if so, whether it's from the ­Macondo well, she said.

Murphy urges the public to report any tar mat, tar ball or anything they suspected BP oil to the National Response Center hotline.

Report tar balls

Report tar ball, tar mats or anything that looks like oil pollution to the National Response Center hotline 800-424-8802.