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Oil spill response and marine pollution incidents

Find NOAA-tracked marine pollution incidents — oil spills, vessel groundings, fires — and the contaminant / bioassay observations that follow them.

What this teaches

  • Two complementary collections: INCIDENT_NEWS (event reports) and NOAA_ORR (DIVER environmental monitoring)
  • How to scope to a region + time window for a specific event search
  • When INCIDENT_NEWS is signal vs. noise (see prompting guide)

Sources used: INCIDENT_NEWS, NOAA_ORR

Prompt

Show me NOAA-reported oil spill and marine pollution incidents in the
Florida Keys / Gulf of Mexico region from the last several years.
Include any environmental contaminant follow-up data.

Transcript

1. Search the incident reports

search_datasets(
  collections = "INCIDENT_NEWS",
  bbox = "-83,24,-80,25.5",
  limit = 5
)

Real items:

ID Title Date
9719 Vessel Paradise Grounding, Key West, FL 2018-04-30
9685 F/V OLE BETTS SEA fire, 22 mi NE of Dry Tortugas 2018-03-18
1306 Tank Truck Accident, Seven-Mile Bridge, Marathon, FL 2005-10-05
1164 Tug taking on water, SE of Marquesas Key, FL 2004-03-26

Each report carries aquaview:platform_type = "Incident Response", a description with the threat type (typically "Oil"), the commodity involved, and a link back to https://incidentnews.noaa.gov/.

2. Pull environmental contaminant follow-up

search_datasets(
  collections = "NOAA_ORR",
  bbox = "-83,24,-80,25.5",
  limit = 5
)

NOAA ORR's DIVER program tracks contaminant monitoring data — sediment, water, tissue samples — that follow major incidents. Records include sample IDs, analyte concentrations, QA flags.

Result the agent gave

"NOAA Incident News records 4+ marine pollution events in the Florida Keys area:

1. Vessel Paradise grounding (Apr 2018) — 55-ft vessel aground at Rock Key Sanctuary Preservation Area off Key West with ~550 gal diesel + 15–20 gal lube oil onboard. No release reported; salvage delayed by sea state. 2. F/V Ole Betts Sea fire (Mar 2018) — fishing vessel caught fire 22 mi NE of Dry Tortugas with 7,000 gal diesel onboard. ORR provided trajectory + fate analysis. 3. Seven-Mile Bridge tank-truck crash (Oct 2005) — fatal collision released gasoline and AFFF firefighting foam into the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. ORR issued biological-impact report. 4. Tug incident SE of Marquesas Key (Mar 2004) — vessel taking on water, no spill, NOAA provided weather support.

Each links back to https://incidentnews.noaa.gov/ for the full incident file. For follow-up environmental monitoring, NOAA_ORR's DIVER program holds the contaminant / bioassay records."

Variations

  • Specific event: filter q = "Deepwater Horizon" for the 2010 spill response data.
  • Time window: combine bbox with datetime for incidents during a specific year.
  • Avoid INCIDENT_NEWS noise on broad queries: use exclude_collections = "INCIDENT_NEWS" when you want ocean data, not incident reports.