quote:



WASHINGTON – A 22-mile-long invisible mist of oil is meandering far below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, where it will probably loiter for months or more, scientists reported Thursday in the first conclusive evidence of an underwater plume from the BP spill....

The underwater oil was measured close to BP's blown-out well, which is about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. The plume started three miles from the well and extended more than 20 miles to the southwest. The oil droplets are odorless and too small to be seen by the human eye. If you swam through the plume, you wouldn't notice it.

"There's no visible evidence of oil in the samples; they look like clear water," study chief author Richard Camilli said.

The scientists used complex instruments — including a special underwater mass spectrometer — to detect the chemical signature of the oil that spewed from the BP well after it ruptured April 20. The equipment was carried into the deep by submersible devices.

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ORIGINAL: BoiJen

Ahem....Sanity....

boi

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ORIGINAL: Politesub53

You do know this is based on research from two months ago ?  It hardly shows the current situation.

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ORIGINAL: Sanity


And as I pointed out above the head researcher was quoted as saying that the invisible, tasteless, odorless and virtually undetectable "plume"  would only last for months, as well.

quote:



It is also possible that the plume has been degraded over time as microbes in the water break down the oil compounds. But the researchers' work suggests that that breakdown is happening relatively slowly. When microbes break down oil they use oxygen, leading to oxygen depletion in the surrounding water. But the researchers' sampling didn't find much evidence of that depletion, suggesting that the oil breakdown is happening relatively slowly and the plume could travel far from the well.

The study comes during continued debate over the fate of the oil from the well. Earlier this month, a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association said that almost 75 percent of oil from the well had been captured, burned, naturally biodegraded or dispersed in the water, and that the dispersed oil was biodegrading quickly.

But this week, two reports from outside scientists have taken issue with the government's conclusions. On Tuesday, a report by researchers at the University of Georgia estimated that 79 percent of the oil from the spill remains unaccounted for, and is biodegrading more slowly than the government's estimates suggest.

And also on Tuesday, scientists at the University of South Florida released preliminary findings of oil droplets sitting on the sediments on the sea floor at the DeSoto Canyon, an underwater canyon farther east of the wellhead. The researchers also found that the oil droplets were toxic to the phytoplankton that make up the base of the area's food chain.

David Hollander, one of the researchers who worked on the University of South Florida study, says that the oil plume research published Thursday in Science fits well with what he's observed -- particularly the fact that the Woods Hole scientists found evidence that the oil in the plume was not biodegrading quickly.

"The deep sea hydrocarbons are degrading at a very low rate, and consequently will have a persistence in the environment for years to decades," he says

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ORIGINAL: Sanity


From a related article:

quote:



WASHINGTON – A 22-mile-long invisible mist of oil is meandering far below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, where it will probably loiter for months or more, scientists reported Thursday in the first conclusive evidence of an underwater plume from the BP spill....

The underwater oil was measured close to BP's blown-out well, which is about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. The plume started three miles from the well and extended more than 20 miles to the southwest. The oil droplets are odorless and too small to be seen by the human eye. If you swam through the plume, you wouldn't notice it.

"There's no visible evidence of oil in the samples; they look like clear water," study chief author Richard Camilli said.

The scientists used complex instruments — including a special underwater mass spectrometer — to detect the chemical signature of the oil that spewed from the BP well after it ruptured April 20. The equipment was carried into the deep by submersible devices.

And yes, it is dispersing and becoming more and more diluted every day. And its interesting to note that no one is arguing with the fact that this is nowhere near the disaster that the irresponsible media once tried to claim.

quote:



But the chemical ingredients of the oil persist more than a half-mile beneath the surface, researchers found.

And the oil is degrading at one-tenth the pace at which it breaks down at the surface. That means "the plumes could stick around for quite a while," said study co-author Ben Van Mooy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, which led the research published online in the journal Science.

Monty Graham, a scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama who was not involved in the study, said: "We absolutely should be concerned that this material is drifting around for who knows how long. They say months in the (research) paper, but more likely we'll be able to track this stuff for years."

Florida State University scientist Ian MacDonald, in testimony before Congress on Thursday, said the gas and oil "imprint of the BP discharge will be detectable in the marine environment for the rest of my life."

.....

Federal officials said there are signs that the plume has started to break into smaller ones since the Woods Hole research cruise ended. But scientists said that wouldn't lessen the overall harm from the oil.

The oil is at depths of 3,000 to 4,000 feet, far below the environment of the most popular Gulf fish like red snapper, tuna and mackerel. But it is not harmless. These depths are where small fish and crustaceans live. And one of the biggest migrations on Earth involves small fish that go from deep water to more shallow areas, taking nutrients from the ocean depths up to the large fish and mammals.

Those smaller creatures could be harmed by going through the oil, said Larry McKinney, director of Texas A&M University's Gulf of Mexico research center in Corpus Christi.

Some aspects of that region are so little known that "we might lose species that we don't know now exist," said Graham of the Dauphin Island lab.

"This is a highly sensitive ecosystem," agreed Steve Murawski, chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The animals down at 3,300 to 3,400 feet grow slowly." The oil not only has toxic components but could cause genetic problems even at low concentrations, he said.

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ORIGINAL: Sanity


And as I pointed out above the head researcher was quoted as saying that the invisible, tasteless, odorless and virtually undetectable "plume"  would only last for months, as well.

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ORIGINAL: Politesub53

You do know this is based on research from two months ago ?  It hardly shows the current situation.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity


And as I pointed out above the head researcher was quoted as saying that the invisible, tasteless, odorless and virtually undetectable "plume"  would only last for months, as well.

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ORIGINAL: BoiJen

Your reading comprehension needs help.

boi

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ORIGINAL: BoiJen


Is this situation no longer a "disaster" because we can't see the oil

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ORIGINAL: Sanity


Can you be more specific in your criticism, or are you just trying to obfuscate here.

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ORIGINAL: BoiJen

Your reading comprehension needs help.

boi

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ORIGINAL: Sanity
I seriously wonder if this ghost plume or whatever you want to call it has anything to do with the BP leak as you would have to assume that the Gulf currents would have carried these virtually undetectable traces of oil far away from the spill site by now.

Then again, as politesub pointed out, this is dated research so it probably is gone unless their ghost plume is from some of the naturally occurring seeps which are in the Gulf.

It seems like a lot of spin, as some people just arent happy unless theyre in the midst of crisis.