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40-Year-Old Oil Spill Offers Clues To Deepwater Horizon's Long-Term Impact

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The Ixtoc I oil spill in 1979, caused by a blown-out oil well. The well ran wild for 9 months, and spilled over 140 million gallons of oil into the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico. (Collection of Doug Helton, NOAA/NOS/ORR)
The Ixtoc I oil spill in 1979, caused by a blown-out oil well. The well ran wild for 9 months, and spilled over 140 million gallons of oil into the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico. (Collection of Doug Helton, NOAA/NOS/ORR)

Scientists from the U.S. and Mexico are teaming up to find out how the environment in the Gulf of Mexico is recovering from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. They're examining satellite data from the Ixtoc oil spill in 1979 off the Mexican coast to see how the area near the Deepwater Horizon spill might look in the future. David Levin has our report.

This story was made possible by the C-IMAGE Consortium, Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative and Mind Open Media. You can find the full series, "Beneath The Horizon," here.

Correction: An earlier version of this post contained a photo that misidentified an oil tanker fire as the Ixtoc oil spill. We regret the error.

This article was originally published on April 18, 2017.

This segment aired on April 18, 2017.

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