During the week of March 10, OR&R provided a Science of Oil Spills (SOS) Class to 45 emergency response and natural resource professionals from the region, nationally, including one student from the Canadian Coast Guard at the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Disaster Response Center. (We had 124 applicants for the class and were only able to accommodate 45, which still is a larger than normal class.)

SOS is a week-long education and training curriculum developed by the Emergency Response Division to educate responders on the fundamentals of oil chemistry, oil fate and transport, oil trajectory and weathering forecasts and modeling, environmental risk from oil toxicology, and shoreline cleanup options. The course focuses on oil spill response and five core questions:

• What was spilled?
• Where will it go in the environment?
• What resources are at risk?
• How will they be impacted?.
• What can be done to mitigate such impacts?

Information on SOS and the NOAA Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center: oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/drc/

For additional information, please contact Adam.Davis@noaa.gov or Charlie.Henry@noaa.gov.

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