Tweet
- CAREER Q&A
- 25 September 2023
Christopher Reddy helped to quantify the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a stressful experience that changed his view of what it means to be a well-rounded scientist and person.
On 15 June 2010, marine chemist Christopher Reddy pushed himself past the point of exhaustion. In the morning, he testified before the US Congress in Washington DC about government agencies’ readiness to cope with crises such as the unfolding Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In the afternoon, he flew to Tampa, Florida, to hop aboard a research vessel from which his team would measure how much oil was pouring into the Gulf of Mexico every day in the largest ocean spill ever recorded.
That research was published in Science1 later that year and used by the US government as evidence in the court case to determine how much money oil firm BP owed in restitution for the spill. It was a career high point for Reddy, but also part of a personal low point. In late 2011, BP subpoenaed Reddy, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and his colleagues for their e-mails and other communications about the research. The team pushed back as a matter of principle — Reddy considered the request for scientists’ correspondence, not just their data, to be an overreach. But in May 2012, they had to turn over their materials. The stress from the legal proceedings, doing research during a crisis and prioritizing work above his health and personal life added up. During the next six months, Reddy had a nervous breakdown, lost 34 kilograms and was involved in three car accidents. His marriage nearly fell apart...
