A perspective on the state of Deepwater Horizon oil spill related tarball contamination and its impacts on Alabama beaches

The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) accident spilled over 785 million liters of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). A substantial fraction of the spilled oil impacted the northern GOM shoreline, including Alabama beaches. The beached oil was in the form of brownish-orange, water-in-oil emulsion, commonly known as mousse. Although significant remediation efforts were undertaken to clean the contaminated beaches, oil residues in the form of tarballs continue to contaminate various GOM beaches. This study reviews recent literature related to the DWH tarball contamination problem and its impacts on GOM beaches, primarily focusing on the beaches located in Alabama. Though the DWH oil spill is an unfortunate disaster, for researchers it constitutes a large-scale experiment conducted on a natural system. This anthropogenic experiment has taught scientists numerous useful lessons and has also posed several challenging questions, some of which are discussed in this review.