In an interview with MIT news, John Marshall offers a perspective on the spill, why ‘we have never had a spill like this', and what that means for cleanup efforts...
More than a month after the tragic events that set off the largest oil spill in U.S. history, scientists and BP officials continue to disagree over the amount of oil that has escaped into the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike other oil spills that have occurred relatively close to the surface, this spill is located about a mile down, which has made it difficult to predict the effects. John Marshall, an oceanographer in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, spoke to MIT News about the deep-sea catastrophe and the long, difficult cleanup ahead.