Four Years After Macondo, 'Alvin' Researches Disaster Site

摘要

Something is happening at the site of the Macondo disaster this month that hasn't happened in almost four years. A veteran undersea workhorse, the 50-year-old Alvin submersible, is taking researchers down to the well site — 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. The wellhead was sealed 87 days after it blew out on Apr. 20, 2010 — causing an explosion and fire that killed 11 men, destroyed the state-of-the art drillship Deepwater Horizon, and caused the nation's worst maritime disaster. Now, as the fourth anniversary passed on Apr. 20, scientists are looking at the environmental legacy of the blowout and the spill that followed.