Deepwater Horizon oil spill

The Gulf of Mexico is an ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast,... north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In Texas and Louisiana it is often called the "Third Coast," in comparison with the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The shape of its basin is roughly oval and is approximately 810 nautical miles wide and filled with sedimentary rocks and debris. It is connected to the Atlantic Ocean through the Florida Straits between the U.S. and Cuba, and with the Caribbean Sea via the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba. With this narrow connection to the Atlantic, the Gulf experiences very small tidal ranges. The size of the Gulf basin is approximately 615,000 mi² . Almost half of the basin is shallow continental shelf waters. At its deepest it is 14,383 ft at the Sigsbee Deep, an irregular trough more than 300 nautical miles long.
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