The BP Oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico took place in 2010. There was an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that was retrieving oil from under the sea floor. This lead to leaking crude oil for 87 days, with a total of 780,000 m3. The rig was digging at 5600m below sea level. Engineers had to design robots that could withstand that level of pressure to close the opening. You can see in the image the black oil slick which has moved and spread out far from the Mobile Dome (red dot) in the centre, which is the centre where the Deepwater Horizon oil rig used to stand. The oil spread approximately 180,000km3. To give you an idea of how much sea that covers... the Greater Toronto Area is approximately 7200km3!!!
Below is a link to the Wikipedia site that gives detailed information about the oil spill disaster. Scroll to the lower half of the article for information about how they tried to clean up the oil spill. They used all the methods we learned in class. Note that they also mentioned retrieval and filtration of water. This means they used skimmers to retrieve surface water and oil, and filtered this water for pollutants before returning it back to sea.
Below is a link to the Wikipedia site that gives detailed information about the oil spill disaster. Scroll to the lower half of the article for information about how they tried to clean up the oil spill. They used all the methods we learned in class. Note that they also mentioned retrieval and filtration of water. This means they used skimmers to retrieve surface water and oil, and filtered this water for pollutants before returning it back to sea.