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fairhunt1 · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 11:18 am Post subject: Tar balls on PINS

From a friend in TP&WD .

Padre Island National Seashore – Yesterday’s collection of oil debris, which made landfall on South Beach, included a 55-gallon BP oil drum that contained several gallons of liquid. The drum was placed in the park’s hazmat facility for collection by the U.S. Coast Guard and for determination and verification of its origins.

Hundreds of paper-thin tar balls, observed by the Coast Guard during overflight surveillance operations, have washed ashore in the Big Shell area of South Beach within the park’s boundary.

The Port Aransas area, north of the park boundary, was subject to an eight-mile long band of sporadic tar balls making landfall.

Cleanup efforts are underway, with Coast Guard officials in the park to assess the situation and to advise on response actions. The park is located over 500 miles from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site.

As the volume of the spill increases, currents and strong winds could bring more remnants of the spill to the Texas coast during the coming months

stxoutdoors · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 11:46 am Post subject:

holy poo poo....weed and oil and tar and oil drums... this is not good for the surf bite ...
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fishinglady · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 12:24 pm Post subject:

The clumps of tar are not just at PINS. They are washing up all along Padre Island from Packery Jetty on south. Some of them are the size of a saucer.
It seems we are getting the impact from the BP spill already, even without a hurricane.

Maybe this is one reason the fishing has been so slow.........

frayed · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 12:31 pm Post subject:

WTH? Not good at all.
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Oil Field Trash II · Full Grown Flour Bluffian Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Posts: 1560

have they proven the oil to be from the BP spill?

there were tarballs washing up in florida a couple weeks ago, but once they took samples into the lab, they showed it was not from the BP well.

I hope it not from that spill...

also, from what I heard... was that the spill gave a great opportunity for ships to pump their bilges out in the gulf... and there MAY have been a few undocumented releases...

Tyler · Site Admin Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 12865

Okay,
Here is the official word on the oil or tar ball rumors

Texas Parks and Wildlife has been monitoring the Deepwater Horizon situation since shortly after it occurred. I just checked with Don Pitts, one of our key personnel involved in this effort, and he says that so far as is known, the latest report that BP oil has reached Texas is just a rumor. Some old, barnacle-covered tar balls have recently been found on Padre and Mustang Island, but they are not believed to be connected to the BP spill.

In fact, some six or eight times since the spill, tar balls have been found on the Texas coast. Lab analysis in all cases has shown that the oil is NOT from the BP rig.

The latest sampling of tar balls are being analyzed, but no results have been returned yet. Even so, Pitts says the belief is that these latest tar balls are NOT from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Hope this helps.

Mike Cox

News and Information Branch

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department

Austin, TX

rabbit · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:16 pm Post subject:

I sure hope he is right.
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Oil Field Trash II · Full Grown Flour Bluffian Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Posts: 1560

good to hear.

I guess some of the above posts were inaccurate. imagine that. Rolling Eyes

fairhunt1 · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:27 pm Post subject:

I wondered about this since when I was a kid remember tar balls on the beach .

This could be from about any rig in the Gulf

SaltyCuda · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:34 pm Post subject:

Tar is Tar! Rolling Eyes

If it's here then we have a problem, I'd rather know it came from the Horizon.

The unknown could be worse.

Oil Field Trash II · Full Grown Flour Bluffian Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Posts: 1560

it's probably the same tar that occasionally washes up on the beach. The only difference now, is people are looking for it.

I'd much rather it NOT be the horizon and know that the oil has been picked up by a current that is carrying it to corpus.

Tar has been washing up on the beach for probably 8900 years before the first humans used oil...

it has been originating out of natural seeps from the gulf forever. Just a natural phenomena.

landlocked beachbum · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:22 pm Post subject:

fishinglady · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:27 pm Post subject:

So, fairhunt1, who is "the friend" with TPWD who sent you the "memo"?

I just came from the TAMUCC meeting about the oil spill, and two Tx Parks & Wildlife people who were there said they had never seen such a statement.

Wherever, the tar is coming from, it has been getting worse in the last few days. When it first started showing up, it was thin and looked like pieces of tar paper. Now, it is washing up in thicker globs that, when squeezed, leave a sticky, oily smelling residue on your hand. Also, yesterday evening while I was walking the beach south of Bob Hall, I saw a white pickup truck with "spill cleanup" painted on the side in blue; it drove by heading north.

Willee · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:25 pm Post subject:

fishinglady · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:46 pm Post subject:

According to the experts at the TAMUCC meeting, Ixtoc went from June 23,1979 until March 1980. They said the first relief well, IA, only partially shut off the flow, so they had to drill a second relief well, IB. I guess that explains why this time the government is requiring BP to get two different relief wells going at once. They also said it took about two months for the oil from that spill to get to the Texas coast. That one was also about 50 miles offshore.