"Is Another Deepwater Disaster Inevitable?"

"Mark Ploen, the silver-haired deputy incident commander, wore a white vest. A 30-year veteran of oil spill wars, Ploen, a consultant, has helped clean up disasters around the world, from Alaska to the Niger Delta. He now found himself surrounded by men he'd worked with on the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska two decades earlier. 'It's like a high school reunion,' he quipped." Joel K. Bourne, Jr. reports for National Geographic with photograph by Joel Sartore September 16, 2010.