GREENVILLE, NC - A team of ECU professors has already started to analyze the effects of the spill. They want to determine how soon the spill could hit our coast and how much of an environmental impact it'll have.
Researchers like ECU’s Dr. Sid Mitra are comparing “hydro-carbon” fingerprints between samples of water collected off our coast and samples from the gulf. They are looking for changes long before anyone actually spots oil in our water.
“We would probably expect it towards the end---the later part of the summer---but there's a lot of conditions that affect that prediction,” Dr. Mitra said.
Right now his team is working to be able to tell people exactly when the oil will make it around and much oil may make it to our coast.
Other professor's at the university are taking a reactive approach. Like biology professor Dr. David Kimmel who will head to the gulf in late August to collect data on what an oil spoil can do to a region's ecosystem.
Kimmel says what's happening in the gulf today, could happen off our shore tomorrow. "In recent times people have been interested in exploring for oil and natural gas off the coast of North Carolina---if we continue to do this---this may be a possibility,” Kimmel said.
It’s expensive work so researchers are looking for other sources of funding.
So far, East Carolina's College of Arts and Sciences came up with a grant of $44,284 from the Natural Science Foundation.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement