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A research vessel launched this week is on an urgent mission to map out damage from a long-overlooked crisis on the ocean floor, and they’re putting
Photo: Chris Carlson (AP) A research vessel launched this week is on an urgent mission to map out damage from a long-overlooked crisis on the ocean floor, and they’re putting robots to work to help. Advertisement In October, people living on Santa Catalina Island, which sits 22 miles (35 kilometers) off the coast of Southern California, were shocked to learn from a Los Angeles Times investigation that a scientist had found leaking barrels of dangerous waste strewn across the ocean floor. Residents had heard rumors that the nation’s largest DDT manufacturer, which was based in Los Angeles ...
Print When Californians learned in October that the waters off Santa Catalina Island once served as a dumping ground for thousands of barrels of DDT waste, the ocean science community jumped into action. A crew was swiftly assembled, shipping lanes cleared, the gears set in motion for a deep-sea expedition aboard the Sally Ride, one of the most technologically advanced research vessels in the country. On Thursday, the ship left San Diego and headed for the San Pedro Basin, where 31 scientists and crew members will spend the next two weeks surveying almost 50,000 acres of the seafloor — a mu...
A team of Scripps and NOAA researchers set sail to map the seafloor for DDT waste barrels dumped decades ago. As many as half a million of these barrels could still be underwater today.