Robert D. Martin

Observing and forecasting coastal currents: Texas Automated Buoy System (TABS)

The Texas Automated Buoy System operates buoys at seven sites off the Texas coast from Brownsville to Sabine in water depths ranging from ten to one hundred meters. The system is supported by the Texas General Land Office as part of its mission to mitigate the effect of catastrophic oil spills on the Texas Coast. Buoys communicate surface currents and water temperature measured at 2m depth in near real time via cell phone and commercial satellite digital data links. One buoy located at East Flower Garden Banks has a 300 kHz ADCP, a meteorology package with an ultrasonic acoustic wind velocity sensor, and a conductivity sensor. Data are posted regularly to a Web page http://www.gerg.tamu.edu/tglo and are available to the public and governments within a few hours after data collection. On the TABS Web page, a graphical map presentation of TABS current vectors has links to data tables and historical databases. Links are also provided to other data resources for oceanographic data in the Gulf of Mexico. Also on the Web page are links to an automated continental shelf forecast system that predicts currents over the Texas-Louisiana shelf on an operational basis. There are four major components in this system: (1) forecast wind field retrieving and preparation, (2) shelf circulation model module, (3) simulation plotting module and (4) Web display and file transfer module. The wind field used is a 3-hour interval ETA-22 forecast gridded wind from NOAA NCEP based on 00, 06, 12, and 18UTC model runs. The shelf circulation model is a 3-D version of Princeton Ocean Model (POM) on a domain extending from the coast to a curved line extending from 25/spl deg/N on the Mexican coast to 85/spl deg/W at the coastline of Florida. The operational POM model used at this time is a simplified barotropic version that permits us to reduce computational time to allow prediction of surface currents twenty-four hours into the future. The data vs. model comparison from April through December, 1999 of nine nearshore TABS buoys indicates modest skill of the model in predicting the wind driven circulation. A fully baroclinic version of TABS-POM model is undergoing tests and will be implemented on an operational basis when sufficient computational resources become available. We are also developing data-assimilating models of the whole Gulf of Mexico and beyond to couple to our shelf model to supply outer boundary conditions.

TEXAS AUTOMATED BUOY SYSTEM: REAL-TIME CURRENTS FOR OIL SPILL RESPONSE

ABSTRACT If the question asked of the oil spill R&D community is, “What have you done for me lately?,” a solid answer is the Texas Automated Buoy System (TABS) and its contribution to the response effort in the 3000-barrel Buffalo Barge 292 oil spill. The TABS network consists of five automated buoys anchored off the Texas coast that report half-hourly current measurements every 6 hours under normal conditions and every 2 hours during spill events. Public access to TABS is provided via an easy-to-use Internet Web page. Because of TABS, trajectory modelers knew the offshore currents within minutes of the Buffalo Barge 292 spill and were able to continuously track the currents along the Texas coast over the next 24 days. TABS also provided the first indications of a critical current reversal during the spill that allowed planners and managers to confidently stand down response preparations (and their associated costs) in some areas while redirecting response resources to truly threatened sections of the coa...

IMPROVING THE SHORELINE ASSESSMENT PROCESS WITH NEW SCAT FORMS

ABSTRACT The shoreline assessment process is an integral component of oil spill response, providing assistance in decision-making and documentation for shoreline cleanup. The process consists of de...

Texas Automated Buoy System - sustainable ocean observations to help protect the environment

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the coast of Louisiana in 2010 woke the country once again to the inherent risks involved in offshore drilling operations. The final overall cost of this spill will not only be measured in dollars, but also in the tragic loss of life, environmental damage to coastal wetlands and damage to the psyche of many of the local residents who once regarded the oil industry simply as a means to prosperity. Although the environment will likely eventually recover, the outrage, hardship and economic impact on local communities cannot be overlooked. Fortunately spills of this nature and magnitude are rare occurrences. Companies involved in the oil industry mitigate the chance for accidents by requiring proper personnel training, daily regular safety and toolbox meetings and regular equipment maintenance. There are standard operating procedures that must be followed for most operations on drilling platforms, tankers and fueling depots which are designed specifically to prevent the accidental discharge of oil. Still, regardless of the quality of training, equipment and procedures, some accidents will still occasionally occur. Some of these accidents will rarely, but inevitably, result in oil being discharged into the environment. Working at sea is a challenging and potentially dangerous occupation where the at sea environment can make even simple tasks difficult and hazardous. Being prepared to act on an oil spill is critical in being able to mitigate the potential impacts. Many of the people who were working on the Deepwater Horizon platform were not yet born in 1979 when the last big blowout occurred in Mexicos Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico. Some were too young to remember the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 and the enormity of the costs involved in cleaning it up. Events such as these led the United States government to pass the 1990 Federal Oil Pollution Act, which allowed the government and its agencies to take control of cleanup operations during an oil spill and recoup all expenses from the responsible party. This in turn led to the Texas government passing the Texas Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act in 1991. Because of the potentially large environmental and socioeconomic impact of any size spill that reaches the coast, there is a great need for timely knowledge and understanding about the environment in which the spill occurred. This is why in 1994, the Texas General Land Office (TGLO) contracted the Geochemical and Environmental Research Group (GERG) of Texas A&M University (TAMU) to develop the Texas Automated Buoy System (TABS). It is the only state funded ocean observation system in the country whose primary mandate is to provide oceanographic and meteorological data for the purpose of modeling oil spill trajectories. With nine permanent locations on the Texas shelf, the TABS system provides spill response managers in Texas with the real time data necessary to accurately predict the trajectory of an offshore oil spill so the environmental and economic impacts of the spill can be minimized. In sixteen years of operation, TABS has been used for decision making purposes in over forty events. The first few minutes after a spill has been detected are critical to determine how to treat the spill, how and where to intercept it and to determine what resources are required. The TABS system provides that vital information to allow response managers to act and mitigate the potential impact from an oil spill.

EVOLUTION OF SHORELINE CLEANUP ASSESSMENT TEAM ACTIVITIES DURING THE BUFFALO 292 OIL SPILL

ABSTRACT The Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Team (SCAT) effort during the Buffalo 292 oil spill is noteworthy because of its evolution during the event and because it demonstrated the importance of having a pretrained pool of field personnel. During the initial phase of the spill, when oil was impacting the Galveston Bay entrance along the upper Texas coast, two teams were assembled by the Texas General Land Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientific support coordinators. The state of Texas had a large pool of trained SCAT personnel from which to draw because of extensive, interagency SCAT training conducted the previous summer. Although traditional SCAT methods proved too time-consuming to provide timely input early in the spill, they did provide information critical in gaining agreement on acceptable final cleanup levels. In the spills second phase, as it moved southwest toward Matagorda Island and points south, the SCAT effort became more streamlined and was better able to...

Growing a Regional Planning and Response Toolkit

The Texas Coastal Oil Spill Planning and Response Toolkit (the Toolkit) was first introduced to the spill response community in 1999 on CDROM. Updated annually since that time, the Toolkit is now in its 12th edition and its contents now span Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. With 2,000 DVDs distributed annually, the Toolkit has become the most widely used vehicle for disseminating Area Contingency Plans (ACPs), Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) maps and almost 1,500 other spill planning and response documents in the USCG District 8 region. Navigating this extensive collection of PDF documents is managed by hyperlinks from a Master Page document which subdivides the contents into seven major categories: ACPs; ESI maps; Regional Response Team VI documents; Incident Command System (ICS) documents; software applications; internet links and additional documents. The “Additional Documents” category contains national and international response plans, oiled wildlife guidelines, as well as a wide vari...

Reducing Trajectory Modeling Response Time In Texas

ABSTRACT Oil spill trajectory models are one of the few tools that can help response teams stay ahead of an oil slick, but the process of trajectory modeling requires many time-consuming steps. Hyd...