Federally organized research teams mobilizing to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are failing to adequately include local ecologists in their efforts, according to some Gulf Coast academic researchers.

Image: National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration

"A chorus is developing here," said William Hawkins, director of the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory (GCRL), of the growing frustration among Gulf State academics who feel that they should be involved more rapidly and intimately in the cleanup and assessment efforts. "It goes without saying that we have knowledge of the environments that are adjacent to us as do colleagues in the other states," he told The Scientist. "I think [including local researchers in federal efforts is] highly appropriate."

For now, though, the scientific work being done in the Gulf is being organized by state and federal agencies in concert with BP and private consultants. "The trustees are doing the lion's share of the work," said Read Hendon, assistant director of fisheries at GCRL. "Where we can participate, we do. In the grand scheme, we're not an integral part of it. We're kind of on the sidelines."

Pete Tuttle, United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) environmental contaminant specialist, is working at the rapidly organized headquarters for the federal Natural Resource Damage Assessment Process in New Orleans. Tuttle told The Scientist that he disagreed with the idea that local experts are being left out of the project. Government planners were doing their best to include Gulf Coast academics in research decisions and projects, and the federal response effort was "reaching out to local experts as needed," he said.

Tuttle added that many Interior Department staffers are converging on the Gulf to lend a hand. "Between state and federal levels, we are all slammed right now. People are working very long hours and very long weeks."

Many experts outside the region are also eager to help. The USFWS is employing outside contractors to help staff research and wildlife rescue efforts in the Gulf. Frank Browne, president of environmental engineering consultancy F.X. Browne, told The Scientist that he's signed up several biologists from around the country to travel to the Gulf to help recover and revive oiled birds in the area. "We have a lot of biologists that want to go down there, even just for a month or two," Browne said. "The biologists are just champing at the bit to go down there."

Most of the scientists he's signed on to work in the Gulf have come from the Eastern US -- places like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York -- Browne said. Though he said that he felt the federal government was utilizing local researchers from Gulf States as much as it could, Browne added that it may be tough for federal agencies like the USFWS to contract work to individual academics, because of rules mandating the use of pre-approved consultants. "You could have a [biologist] two miles away that's very qualified, but he doesn't work for one of these companies that has 200 people."

Eugene Turner, an ecologist at Louisiana State University's (LSU) Coastal Ecology Institute, told The Scientist that feelings of exclusion among local researchers came to a head when Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was lauded for his plan to build a kilometers-long, $350 million sand berm to protect the state's coast. However, local scientists had nearly unanimously panned the plan because of its projected inability to stop the onslaught of crude oil from deeper waters and the damage it would cause to deltaic ecosystems.

Len Bahr, a retired LSU coastal ecologist and a former science adviser to Louisiana governors from 1991-2008, told The Scientist that it's the state government that's paying too little attention to local researchers, starting with Jindal's sand berm project. "[Scientists have] been almost completely left out of the picture when it came to the planning," Bahr said. "In fact, Louisiana has a cadre of applied scientists who are ready, willing and able."

"I think the government is a little frenzied, and it's a huge complex problem, but I still think that more use could have been made out of the expertise here," said Turner. "There are some good people here who go out all the time."

Though it seems that some academics are being consulted about burgeoning research projects to assess the ecological impacts of the spill, the process has been slow. "I'm really reluctant to criticize, and I think [federal response teams are] using whatever resources they have," Hawkins added. "If you've ever dealt with the feds, it's hard to move rapidly."


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