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COOL News

Tanker Runs Aground, RU COOL On Call -- May 9, 2002

On Thursday, May 2 a tanker carrying around 40 million gallons of crude oil onboard ran aground against muddy bottom about 14 nautical miles outside of Delaware Bay. While the vessel, Crude Target, was not leaking or damaged, the Coast Guard and a team from NOAA/HAZMAT began monitoring the situation.

To make matters worse, a large storm was threatening the area. "There was the potential for a large spill," said Glen Watabayashi, and Oceanographer with NOAA's HAZMAT team.

In order to be prepared for a major disaster, experts from NOAA's oil spill response team called the Rutgers University Coastal Ocean Observation Lab (RU COOL). According to Dr. Scott Glenn, Co-Director of RU COOL, "both NOAA and the Coast Guard would be monitoring the CODAR ocean currents on our COOLroom web site, just in case something happened and they would have to respond."

NOAA/HAZMAT works with the Coast Guard to prepare for a spill by predicting where the oil would go and what the fate of the oil would be. In order to best prepare for a larger incident, the HAZMAT team turned to the web site of coastal currents maintained by RU COOL. "The web site provided not only data but valuable analysis on the data," says Watabayashi. "All of this [data] was very pertinent in preparing for a potential oil spill and would have been invaluable should the spill have occurred."

At RU COOL, Dr. Glenn heralded the chance to provide assistance in an emergency as a welcome opportunity for the nascent observing system. "The response of the Rutgers students made me proud. Everyone chipped in, doing whatever they could to rapidly update the CODAR currents with the latest data until the storm passed."

The efforts of the group did not go unnoticed. "What a super response," piped Joe Seneca, Vice President of Academic Affairs at Rutgers University. "Timely, effective, useful, and in such a critical situation." Had a spill occurred, its damages could have been far reaching. The springtime is the peak of the shorebird migration season along New Jersey's southern marshlands.

In the end, the tanker survived the night without further incident and was floated off late Friday morning.

While the data from RU COOL was not crucial, it could be in future. NOAA plans to continue working with the lab. "We have used the web site and the people responsible for the site several times in the past and will continue to do so," says Watabayashi.

Dr. Seneca agrees that the potential for RU COOL is high. "I am very proud of the Institute and its outstanding and important work."

The need for ocean observing systems is quite clear.