UWF biology professor educates commissioners on the science of oil spill

Dr. Dick A. Snyder, director of the University of West Florida Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation in the biology department, addressed the Santa Rosa County commissioners at their regular meeting on May 27, trying to dispel rumors and to scientifically evaluate the oil-spill situation, as it relates to Navarre Beach and the adjoining Florida coast.

Snyder, who lives in Gulf Breeze and who is also public relations officer for a small group of academic scientists across the state studying the issue, said that in a recent conversation with one of his colleagues, they agreed that while hysteria travels faster and farther than the oil, the antidote to hysteria is the truth.