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The WFSU Ecology Blog

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Notes From the Field

Under the Surface at Pensacola Beach

by Rob Diaz de Villegas August 26, 2010
by Rob Diaz de Villegas August 26, 2010 0 comment

Rob Diaz de Villegas WFSU-TV

Last month, I ventured just outside the Forgotten Coast to Pensacola Beach. I was serving as videographer for Matt Roush and FSU Headlines.  The piece was on research by Marcus Huettel and Joel Kostka on some important little critters (we love important little critters), really little ones.  The sand was a gleaming white, reflecting the sun onto me and burning my feet.  Parents and children swam in the water while a row of bulldozers sat idle with bored cleanup workers resting in the shade of their machines’ canopies.  At a glance, it didn’t look like the beach had recently been covered in a mat of crude oil.

Drs. Huettel and Kostka took a little more than a glance, though.  They and their graduate students dug two trenches in the sand, one on each side of a tent set up by a family right next to the designated research area.  I wondered if those vacationers looked into those trenches and saw what we saw, what you’ll see in the video above.  It looked like a Viennetta ice cream cake- clean white vanilla with little streaks of chocolate.  At least the oil was a little deeper than where a sandcastle moat would be dug.

The little critters being studied eat oil; microbes who may provide us with a safe alternative to products like Corexit.  Corexit disperses oil, spreading it thin enough to be considered safe, with a low enough parts-per-million in the water.  Corexit itself is a solution of mysterious composition (one disclosed ingredient is petroleum distillate) which is potentially toxic.  It’s difficult to tell, as few people know what is in it.  Of course, all of those microbes are part of an ecosystem, and their feeding on this abundant food source and thriving and multiplying may have consequences as well.  Intuitively, the solution nature has honed over millions of years should work more effectively and with less harm to the Gulf than one that seems like it was designed to quickly disperse oil and get it out of our sight.  We’ll see what the research finds.

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bacteriacoastal ecologydeepwater horizon oil spillFlorida State UniversityFSU Coastal and Marine Labmarine biologymicrobesPensacola Beach
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Rob Diaz de Villegas

Rob Diaz de Villegas is a senior producer for WFSU-TV, covering outdoors and ecology. After years of producing the music program OutLoud, Rob found himself in a salt marsh with a camera, and found a new professional calling as well. That project, the National Science Foundation funded "In the Grass, On the Reef," spawned the award winning WFSU Ecology Blog. Now in its tenth year, the Ecology Blog recently wrapped its most ambitious endeavor, the EcoCitizen Project. Rob is married with two young sons, who make a pretty fantastic adventure squad.

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iNaturalist became a part of the WFSU Ecology Blog during the EcoCitizen Project in 2019.  Since then, we’ve used it to help identify the many plants and animals we see on our shoots.  And on the Backyard Blog, we show how it can be used to identify weeds and garden insects, to help figure out what’s beneficial or a possible pest.  Below is the iNaturalist profile belonging to WFSU Ecology producer Rob Diaz de Villegas.

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