The clean-up still has a long way to go (Image: John Moore/Getty)

Doug Inkley, senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, has spent the past week surveying the oil spill from the wrecked Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico by airplane and boat, and on islands where oil has come ashore. He tells New Scientist how the experience has left him frustrated and angry that clean-up efforts are not as widespread or effective as he’d been led to believe.

What does the situation on the ground look like?

I expected to see the area teeming with people. In the three days I spent in the air, I only saw one skimmer boat. Yesterday I saw an island protected by booms, but booms are a last resort and very difficult to make effective: 90 per cent of the oil I saw had got passed them.


During a boat survey 15 kilometres from the shore we came across a thick patch of oil. It was half an inch thick and looked like fresh crude straight out of the barrel. There were thousands of dead jellyfish, and a shark that was obviously in distress swimming in circles through the oil.

The thing that bothers me is these are the nation’s waters. What amazes me is that the worst of the oil we saw was 80 kilometres from the spill site.

What about the unseen impacts?

The real issue here is under water, where it’s hard for the public to see the impact and just as hard for the scientists to assess the damage. We have an endangered sperm whale population in the Gulf and their most active area is right at the mouth of the Mississippi where the sea floor drops off – and that’s exactly where the oil spill is.

Do you feel BP is doing everything it can to clean up the spill?

We have been very, very frustrated with BP’s unwillingness to be transparent about the process. The size of the spill has been underestimated, and the company is still refusing to release the exact make-up of chemical dispersants it is using. The American public is upset by this spill. Now our upset is turning to anger because the public believe they are being lied to. We want to be told what’s going on, even if it’s bad news. That’s my sense at least.