The flow has yet to be stopped after the latest attempt to plug the leaks with heavily packed mud and cement failed last week.

The research cruise, which returned Thursday after spending nearly a week at sea, had its initial research plans changed by the oil spill.

“For the most part, we tried to avoid it,” Kamphuis said. “There were parts we wanted to do a little study on.”

The researchers were supposed to look at nitrogen cycling in the Gulf of Mexico near the Louisiana coast in an area affected by fertilizers carried from the Mississippi River. Fish in that region tend to die as the fertilizers deplete the oxygen in the water, and the research focused on nitrogen levels in the area.

But once the oil spill occurred, the trip was able to obtain an $85,000 rapid response grant from the National Science Foundation because of a collaborative effort between MSU and the University of Texas at Austin. The study now will look at the effects oil has on the area infected by fertilizers.

Nathaniel Ostrom, a professor of zoology who did not participate on the research cruise but is affiliated with the cruise’s researchers, said the oil will further impact the area affected by fertilizers by depleting already low levels of oxygen in that area, which could harm plant and aquatic life.

“The oil will be degraded by microbes, and in the process oxygen is consumed,” Ostrom said.

“The oil might block penetration of sunlight and slow down photosynthesis, which normally produces oxygen, and there is reduced exchange of oxygen between atmosphere and ocean.”

The chief scientist on the cruise, Wayne Gardner, professor of marine science at the University of Texas, said although timing of the cruise added a new level to the research, the overall spill is regrettable.

“It was exciting to be one of the first groups out there from that standpoint,” Gardner said, “But it’s still sad (the oil spill) happened.”

Ostrom initially signed Kamphuis up for the trip as a way for him to get experience before Kamphuis’ forthcoming trip to Antarctica this October to participate in a study of a dry lake.

“He’s a very young scientist with not a lot of experience,” Ostrom said of Kamphuis. “I don’t think he had any intention of getting into oil spill research, but at the same time it’s an opportunity.”
Kamphuis said he does not yet know what effect the oil had on the cruise’s research.

“On the news, there were those shrimp boats that are going through collecting oil,” Kamphuis said.
“BP said they were constantly cleaning up. We saw these ships supposed to be cleaning doing nothing a lot of (the) time. You’d just see them sitting there, anchored, doing nothing.”

The oil also affected how the research was conducted and the instrumentation used, Kamphuis said.

“The crew told us we weren’t allowed into cabins if we had oil on our shoes,” Kamphuis said.

“We had to use (soap) to clean things off if we dealt with the oil at all. We didn’t sample things with oil until the end of the trip because the crew was afraid they would mess up all the instruments they had.”