Discussion
Rφdal : Are you spraying at night using infrared for targeting?
Lunel : No, we didn't do any spraying at night. It was more important to keep the crews fresh so that the operation was effective during the day. When you consider that the crew have to beup there and continually spraying during the day, that it would be too much of a strain on the air crew to also keep that operation going during the night. So that was not an option that was used on the SEA EMPRESS. It is something that is considered, but I think it has to be a balance between hitting the oil early, but also making sure that the application is efficient.
Kudo : Did you use remote sensing technique by satellites or aircraft for drift prediction?
Lunel : It was very much integrated between the modeling and the aerial remote sensing of working out where they might go, but then confirming it with aerial remote sensing. Those are the twotools that we use. The satellite image was available at the time. I think it came in 2 days after the actual overpass. But it was not used, because we knew that the image from the satellite was actually mis-leading. So we feel that the satellite is probably more useful for looking at small discharges, maybe operational discharges, and monitoring those, and maybe is of more limited use in a major incident. We wouldn't discard it in a major incident, because it gives us anoverview, but it does need very careful interpretation.
