Beachgoers, lifeguards, boaters and anglers. It’s time to begin looking out for the bright yellow drift cards that may be floating in the Gulf of Mexico or washing up on Florida’s beaches.
Since Monday, about 250 drift cards have been tossed into the Gulf off of Northwest Florida by the UWF scientists participating in research, spearheaded by Texas A&M University, designed to improve prediction models on how oil and gas travel the currents of the Gulf.
“We deployed them in three transects from Pensacola, Destin, and Panama City from roughly 5 to 60 miles offshore at 5-mile intervals,” said Wade Jeffrey, a UWF Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation scientist.
His department was asked to deploy some of the cards while on research cruises in the Gulf.
From this week through the end of 2014, about 5,000 cards made of nontoxic painted wood will be deployed by a number of research vessels all along the Gulf's continental shelf between Florida and Texas.
The universities are conducting the research for Gulf Integrated Spill Research Consortium, created in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010, which is receiving money for a 10-year, $500-million independent research program funded by BP.
Finding one of the cards and following the instructions to report where and when you found it will enter you into a once-a-month sweepstakes. But more importantly, the researchers say you’ll be part of an important research project.
