Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Where has the oil in the Gulf spread to now?

A citizen-generated, crowd-sourced map is being created at the Oil Reporter.

oil-now.jpg

TechPresident reports on the project:

Citizens have reported oil sightings and sent pictures of oil, both the tarballs and sludge that washes up and the slicks that loom out at sea.

There are conflicting reports, including one that reports “all clear off shore 1-4 miles off shore From Pensacola pass to Destin,” but that one is refuted by several other people.

It's the crowd in action: Messy, not always clear, but pretty accurate, all things considered. It's important to note that these are snapshots of the location of a moving target — the oil slick, the tarballs, and the sludge are all presumably on the move at all times.

Neither the media or the various authorities (and certainly not BP) seem to be doing this for us, so folks are doing it for themselves.

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