Earth Protect Blog

Since BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded into one of the worst man-made ecological disasters in history, one big question has remained unanswered: Just how big of a mess is it? While BP asserts there's no way to know, marine experts say that if the oil giant would but release more video from its submersible ROVs and provide a little data on the well itself, they could deduce the magnitude of the leak, as well as inform the effort to plug the leaking well pipe.

So far there have been a lot of numbers floated out there concerning the amount of crude spewing into the Gulf; the U.S. Coast Guard continues to repeat the earliest estimate of 5,000 barrels per day, but BP officials told Congress that as many as 60,000 barrels per day could potentially be flowing into the ocean.
BP has already released some video of the largest of the two known leaks along the riser pipe, and that could help researchers make some kind of assessment as to just how bad things are on the seafloor.

Timothy Crane of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory -- an expert on natural sea-floor jets -- told the Guardian a full suite of information on the leaking pipe and some additional video could give him and other researchers all they need to make an informed estimation:
"If they took about 20 or 30 seconds of video with a very specific purpose of measuring flow rates, which means having the ROV [remotely operated vehicle] stay completely still or parked on the bottom, and you got video of the plume close to the leak, and if it was illuminated and with high resolution, then you could get pretty good estimates of the flow rates."
BP has already tried lowering a 100-ton containment dome over the leak, but hydrate crystals formed in the plume and clogged the pipe that was supposed to ferry the oil to tankers on the surface, and that effort was abandoned.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYFYVNvgg-A&feature=player_embedded 100x100]

http://about-marine-biology.com/marine-biology-1/scientists-say-they-can-measure-rate-of-oil-leak-if-bp-releases-clear-seafloor-video/