Florida Governor Charlie Crist, left, addresses the roundtable and members of the media, as Rosenstiel School Dean Roni Avissar looks on.

After visits to Panama City and Tampa Bay, where he addressed matters related to the Gulf oil spill, Florida Governor Charlie Crist made a stop at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science last Wednesday. The U.S. Senate hopeful joined a group of UM scientists and other lawmakers in a roundtable discussion there on the environmental disaster’s impact on the state’s key industries and ecosystems.

The roundtable, held in a Rosenstiel School second-floor conference room, came just five days before tomorrow’s special legislative session to consider a constitutional ban on offshore drilling, and almost three months after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers.

Last week, BP officials announced that the flow of oil from the blown-out undersea well, which may have gushed anywhere between 93 and 184 million gallons of crude, had been capped. Even so, Gulf shore residents remain concerned about the potential long-term damage caused by the spill.

“This is important to Florida—all of Florida,” Crist said at last Wednesday’s roundtable. “Florida depends on tourism as a major driver of its economy…The [state’s] economy and environment are inextricably linked, and we want to do everything we can to protect them.”

Many of the elected officials at the meeting expressed concern over the oil spill’s potential toll on the tourist-based economies of their region. Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez, Village of Key Biscayne Vice Mayor Michael Davey, and State Senator Alex Villalobos, a UM alumnus, were among those in attendance.

Like the group of lawmakers sitting among them, the UM scientists at the discussion also expressed concerns, but from an environmental standpoint.

Local and state lawmakers and UM scientists and researchers took part in last Wednesday's roundtable discussion on the Gulf oil spill.

Much of the oil that spewed from the blown-out well head will sink to the ocean floor, where it can exist as tar balls and tar mats for decades, adversely affecting marine life and ecosystems, explained James Englehardt, a UM professor of environmental engineering who has developed a computer model for locating sunken oil.

“Some lighter fractions of oil are evaporating, but heavier ones are sinking,” Englehardt said.

Jerald Ault, a professor of marine biology and fisheries, said the spill could have a devastating impact on the state’s fisheries, endangering species in critical stages of development.

“The timing of the spill coincided almost exactly with the spawning of many premium species,” said Ault, who recently conducted a fish census in the Dry Tortugas of the Florida Keys. “Typically, they spawn offshore, so their natal habitat is right in the pathway of the material. Several of these animals will spawn to the south and migrate up into the center of the affected area, so the spill will also affect adult spawners looking for food.”

Rosenstiel School Dean Roni Avissar explained that his school’s efforts in monitoring and tracking the spill continue, with scientists employing sophisticated computer modeling to simulate the movement of oil in the Gulf.

Much of that modeling has been aided by satellite imagery provided by the Rosenstiel School’s Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS), which is now receiving optical data from 20 near-earth orbiting satellites, allowing scientists to produce daily maps that track the flow of the oil.

The highly detailed maps, says CSTARS director and professor of applied marine physics Hans Graber, have been used by the U.S. Coast Guard to locate and intercept oil as it endangers shore lines.