| “We wanted to cover the full gamut of information that people would want.” | |
| Roy Kron, Louisiana Sea Grant College Program | |
As an explosion and subsequent fire damaged the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 22, communications staff members from the four Gulf of Mexico Sea Grant programs were meeting in Florida to discuss improving regional communications. When it became clear that a massive oil spill was occurring just off their coastlines, the communicators shifted their focus from long-term goals to the crisis at hand. Just over a week after BP’s oil rig capsized and sank, a regional oil spill Web portal went live.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill website, http://gulfseagrant.tamu.edu/oilspill/index.htm, provides links to everything from the latest developments in the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to background information on oil spills in general. Organizations from around the country are linking to the site.
“Generally, the site is updated daily,” says Roy Kron, director of outreach and communications for the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program. “There was a flurry of activity initially, but that has slowed down as far as new content is concerned.”
Learning from Katrina
Kron says part of the idea for a comprehensive oil spill website came from a hurricane website that Louisiana Sea Grant created shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“That site continued to evolve with additional information on hurricane preparation in general, impacts to communities, and how communities were responding,” he says. “That turned out to be a great resource for extension agents, as well as local planners and citizens to keep up with what was going on.”
Auspicious Timing
For several years, the four Gulf of Mexico Sea Grant programs have had a regional website hosted by Texas Sea Grant. Late last year, the communicators in the Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi-Alabama, and Florida programs decided that the regional website needed a redesign, which Louisiana volunteered to lead.
While attending a sea level rise conference in Florida the week of April 22, the group—which included Kron; Jim Hiney, communications coordinator at Texas Sea Grant; Dorothy Zimmerman, interim director of communication at Florida Sea Grant; and Melissa Schneider, communications coordinator for Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant—met to discuss the regional website.
“We were discussing projects that we can do together and what each program could contribute to the regional website,” Kron says. “We were looking more towards focusing on sea level rise at that point.”
Shifting Focus
By the time the communicators returned to their respective state offices, it was clear the BP spill was not going to be a short-term event, and the collaborators’ attention quickly turned to making oil spill information available for extension staff members and coastal residents.
A search of the Internet found that a comprehensive oil spill website did not already exist. Instead of being able to refer people to one site, as they had expected, information had to be compiled from other sources, including the Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN), NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, various branches of the military, universities, and others.
A call for material also went out to various partner organizations and networks, and some original content was generated by Sea Grant programs.
“We wanted to cover the full gamut of information that people would want, from what is going on, to how do you respond if you run your boat through it, to where you could volunteer, to how do you handle animals that may be contaminated by the oil,” Kron says.
The oil spill website went live on April 30—eight days after the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion.
Evolving Effort
The site has been publicized mostly through partner programs and networks, and has evolved to include a bulletin board system where researchers going out to collect samples can coordinate their efforts, saving time and resources.
While it’s still early to evaluate the site’s success, Kron notes that many other organizations, including EDEN and other Sea Grant programs, have asked to link to the portal. A button with the Sea Grant logo was designed for other organizations to add to their websites.
“Things just fell into place,” Kron says. “A lot of it was luck, but having good relationships with your partners makes it easier to respond to a crisis like this. We’ve taken advantage of each program’s strengths, and we’re not duplicating efforts. This truly was a collaborative effort that demonstrates the value of working together.”
To view the Gulf of Mexico oil spill website, go to http://gulfseagrant.tamu.edu/oilspill/index.htm. For more information on the site and its development, you may contact Roy Kron at (225) 578-6564, or rkron@lsu.edu.
