Latest news from November 30 Operational Update:
Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge has four crews that continue to remove submerged oil and remove tarballs from beaches. They average 6,000 pounds of oil/day. Total estimated amounts of oiled debris removed from sensitive lands since August 16: Florida: 855,022 pounds; Alabama: 550,080 pounds; Mississippi: almost 2 million pounds. Read the complete report at restorethegulf.gov.

News from November 24 Regarding Closing of Part of Gulf to Royal Red Shrimping: :
NOAA has closed 4,213 square miles of Gulf of Mexico federal waters off Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to royal red shrimping. The precautionary measure was taken after a commercial shrimper, having hauled in his catch of the deep water shrimp, discovered tar balls in his net.
Fishing for royal red shrimp is conducted by pulling fishing nets across the bottom of the ocean floor. The tar balls found in the catch may have been entrained in the net as it was dragged along the seafloor. Read the complete report at restorethegulf.gov.

For other kinds of fishing, an area covering 1,041 square miles immediately surrounding the Deepwater Horizon wellhead still remains closed to all commercial and recreational fishing. The fishing area closure was first instituted on May 2, at which time it covered about 3 percent (6,817 square miles) of Gulf waters around the wellhead. As oil continued to spill from the wellhead, the area grew in size, peaking at 37 percent (88,522 square miles) of Gulf waters on June 2.

News from November 10 Operational Update:
From FOSC Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft, November 10, 2010: "This is the 204th day of the Deepwater Horizon response. One milestone that probably most people were not aware of this week – two days ago, the plug and abandonment of the Macondo 252 well was complete. And in fact, when it was completed, the cap that went over it has 11 stars on it to memorialize the 11 lives lost during that tragic explosion on April 20. "

The number of vessels involved in the response has gone down to only 135 because "We've – we have a number of those vessels that have to be decontaminated. We've – there were over 3,600 of those that were actually in oil and we have over 20 dry docks throughout the Gulf of Mexico where we are decontaminating all those vessels. We've been able to decontaminate about 1,200 of those and we expect to have all of those vessels cleaned by the end of the calendar year. "

What is the response costing per day at this point now that the well has been plugged?

Adm. Zukunft: "Those are really probably more BP proprietary numbers. But I will say that you know the response you know on a daily basis – we're currently averaging about a $27 million per day burn rate. "

Relief Well Progress and Final Plugging of Leaking Well
On September 19, Admiral Allen provided details about the successful plugging of the relief well:

"After months of extensive operations planning and execution under the direction and authority of the U.S. government science and engineering teams, BP has successfully completed the relief well by intersecting and cementing the well nearly 18,000 feet below the surface. With this development, which has been confirmed by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, we can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead. Additional regulatory steps will be undertaken but we can now state, definitively, that the Macondo well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico. "

Two relief wells were drilled. "Development Driller III" began drilling in early May and has drilled to the depth required to intercept the gushing well. The second rig drilling a relief well is "Development Driller II". Drilling for the second relief well began in mid-May. Both rigs are owned by Transocean.

Birds and other wildlife continue to die from the effects of the gulf oil spill. This chart shows the number of birds collected and released in the gulf region for Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi.
8,184 total oiled birds were collected as of November 2, 2010. No additional wildlife reports have been released since November 2, 2010.

Number of Animals Dead or Injured as a Result of the Gulf Oil Leak - Timeline: This chart shows that 9,436 animals have been collected injured or dead as a result of the oil spill as of September 24 compared with only 3,000 at the beginning of July.

This timeline shows how number of birds being found dead is increasing at an accelerated pace even though the oil stopped flowing in July. As of September, over 8,100 birds have been found oiled or dead in the Gulf.



100 mammals (including dolphins) have been found dead in the Gulf as of November 2010.

This chart shows that more than 1,100 dead and oiled
sea turtles
have been found in the gulf since the oil spill.