HAPPY
N O L A.C O M
|
EASTER
S u n d ay, a p r i l 20, 2025
$2.50X
BP oil spill effects still being revealed Deepwater Horizon disaster sparked 15 years of intense research
BY MIKE SMITH | Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By SOPHIA GERMER
Runners in the first group take off down Poydras Street during the 2025 LCMC Health Crescent City Classic in New Orleans on Saturday. BELOW: Brian Marelo gets ready to participate in the 2025 LCMC Health Crescent City Classic on Saturday.
THRILL OF THE RACE
Teen athlete with spina bifida crushes Crescent City Classic goal BY MISSY WILKINSON | Staff writer Wearing a sports watch and a hydration pack, Brian Marelo queued up with 18,200 fellow racers waiting for the starting gun to kick off the 47th Crescent City Classic 10K on Saturday morning in downtown New Orleans. “I’m not nervous,” the 15-year-old Hahnville High School student said. “I’ve been training, so I’m pretty confident right now.” It was his second time competing in the iconic road race, and the first time he’d approached it with focus, lapping the 0.8mile walking trail behind his house and doing 5Ks nearly every weekend. He aimed to hold a pace of 8 to 9 minutes per mile for a 55-minute finish — faster than
ä Local flavor dominates sold-out Crescent City Classic. PAGE 1C most of the field. Brian Marela’s competitive nature isn’t the only thing that sets him apart. The calluses that mark him as a distance athlete are on his hands, not his feet — earned from hundreds of miles logged in a lightweight chair with cantilevered wheels. “I wasn’t supposed to be able to do all these things I currently do,” said Brian Marelo, who has spina bifida. “You’re only going to hurt yourself if you believe you can’t. But if you try, you might find out that you can.”
through the jungle, schlepping gear and sidestepping snakes. And over the course of his career, professor Marcello Canuto has done plenty of that. Still does, sometimes. But these days, the discovBY JENNA ROSS | Staff writer eries are coming from a dark, Discovering Maya cities cool computer lab on the Tuused to involve bushwhacking lane University campus.
WEATHER HIGH 82 LOW 71 PAGE 8B
ä See DEEPWATER, page 6A
ä See RACE, page 7A
Tulane archaeologists discover ancient Mayan city New technology paints a clearer picture of region
Out on the edge of Louisiana’s coast, a set of giant plant pots stand as reminders of the worst-ever oil spill of its kind. But you couldn’t tell just by looking at them. The rows of containers sit under a wood frame and netting. Inside grows the same cordgrass that carpets the marshes stretching out within eyesight of this spot, in the tiny community of Cocodrie. It’s all part of an elaborate experiment continuing to reveal some effects of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. “There are a lot of lessons learned that will come from this,” said Brian Roberts, referencing the range of research that the spill prompted. He conceived the cordgrass experiment with colleagues. “It hopefully will help us better prepare in the event that something else happens,” added Roberts, the executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, as he walked elevated planks among the fiberglass containers. April 20 marks the 15th anniversary of the blowout and subsequent spill at the Macondo well off the Mississippi River’s mouth in the Gulf. The Deepwater Horizon rig, owned by
That lab is the new star of the Middle American Research Institute, an enduring font of information about Indigenous America, especially the ancient Maya, who lived in what is today southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. For decades, information about the vast civilization de-
pended upon arduous expeditions that, it turns out, missed wide swaths of gardens and terraces, houses and yards. Not only the pyramids, but the neighborhoods. Archaeologists are now studying images made via li-
ä See CITY, page 8A
Business ......................1E Deaths .........................3B Nation-World................2A Classified ..................... 1F Living............................1D Opinion ........................6B Commentary ................7B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
GIMME, GIMME.
ORDER ONLINE OR ON OUR APP RaisingCanes.Com
STAFF FILE PHOTO By MICHAEL DeMOCKER
Fireboats try to extinguish the blaze on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that was drilling BP’s Macondo well south of Venice on April 21, 2010, after an explosion the day before left 11 workers dead and 17 injured. Oil gushed into the Gulf for 87 days as attempts to cap the well failed. In the end, an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil spilled.
12TH yEAR, NO. 251