Tar ball fingerprinting

Captains,

Did you know oil has a finger print? The USCG Marine Safety Lab in New London CT eliminated the Deepwater Horizon well as the source of the tar balls found in Key West. Here's how they do it:

The Oil Identification System (OIS), developed during the mid-1970s at the Coast Guard Research and Development Center, is based on a multi-method approach to "fingerprinting" oils. In 1978, the Central Oil Identification Laboratory (COIL) was established as the operating facility to implement the OIS. In 1988, COIL was renamed the Marine Safety Laboratories (MSL), and in 1996 Marine Safety Laboratories became Marine Safety Laboratory. OIS is designed to determine the unique, intrinsic chemical properties of oils via analytical techniques and establish whether or not a common source relationship exists between samples of spilled oil and samples of oil from a suspected source.

The USCG MSL is just one of the little known resources that have aided the response in the Gulf of Mexico.

RADM W