Oil Spills: A Guided Tour

4 - Overflight Support

For significant spills, specialists from NOAA OR&R typically travel to the incident site to provide on-scene support. Their main task is to conduct aerial surveillance. These specialists fly over the area of the spill in either helicopters or airplanes to survey the spill scene, estimate the extent of any oil slick that has formed, and track the movement of the spilled oil. Information from overflights is used in our computer model to help predict the trajectory of the spilled oil.

In the photo above right, a NOAA OR&R oceanographer (in orange flight suit) prepares to begin an overflight.

Overflight Results

During overflights, our spill specialists note the locations where they've observed different types of oil, places where the shoreline has been affected, oceanographic features that affect the movement of oil, and other information needed by the response team. They record this information in photographs and overflight maps of the area surveyed.

Above is a photo taken during an overflight, showing a streamer of brown, emulsified oil, with silver and gray sheen along its edges. In our Image Galleries (link at left) are photos of two overflight maps made during the 1996 response to a spill of fuel oil into San Francisco Bay.