OILING INSIDE BARATARIA BAY

Barataria Bay is a shallow embayment (24 kms long, 20 kms wide) between the Lafourche and Plaquemines distributaries in southeastern Louisiana. It is enclosed by a system of barrier islands and tidal inlets and consists of expansive open-water areas with small isolated marsh islands, and is backed by wetlands composed of Spartina, Phragmites, and Black Mangrove. The region was oiled between May and late July 2010 due to the Macondo spill. Initially, oil impacted the shores of islands immediately behind the inlets (e.g. Queen Bess) but took more than a week to reach the northern, innermost areas of Barataria where shorelines in Bay Jimmy and surrounding sectors received the heaviest oiling. The spatial extent and degree of oiling conditions compare well to hydrodynamic model predictions of surface currents driven by tides and wind stresses. Photo-monitoring sites set up in areas of light, moderate and heavy oiling around the bay document recovery rates using sequential photography. Areas of light oiling on Spartina recovered quickly and in most cases, oil is no longer visible. Shorelines in the Bay Jimmy remain in the heavy category for oiled shorelines. Here degraded oil is observed on the marsh platform, on vegetation, and in wrack lines where surfaces are exposed to weather and wave action. Un-weathered oil remains under heavily oil-matted vegetation, in areas where surfaces are not exposed to the surface weathering processes.