Oil from BP Spill Pooled on Bottom; Oil Found as Far as 70 Miles from Site; Only Bacteria Seen Alive in Samples

September 13th, 2010

Via: ABC News:

Oil from the BP spill has not been completely cleared, but miles of it is sitting at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a study currently under way.

Professor Samantha Joye of the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, who is conducting a study on a research vessel just two miles from the spill zone, said the oil has not disappeared, but is on the sea floor in a layer of scum.

“We’re finding it everywhere that we’ve looked. The oil is not gone,” Joye said. “It’s in places where nobody has looked for it.”

All 13 of the core samples Joye and her UGA team have collected from the bottom of the gulf are showing oil from the spill, she said.

In an interview with ABC News from her vessel, Joye said the oil cannot be natural seepage into the gulf, because the cores they’ve tested are showing oil only at the top. With natural seepage, the oil would spread from the top to the bottom of the core, she said.

“It looks like you just took a strip of very sticky material and just passed it through the water column and all the stuff from the water column got stuck to it, and got transported to the bottom,” Joye said. “I know what a natural seep looks like — this is not natural seepage.”

In some areas the oily material that Joye describes is more than two inches thick. Her team found the material as far as 70 miles away from BP’s well.

“If we’re seeing two and half inches of oil 16 miles away, God knows what we’ll see close in — I really can’t even guess other than to say it’s going to be a whole lot more than two and a half inches,” Joye said.

This oil remaining underwater has large implications for the state of sea life at the bottom of the gulf.

Joye said she spent hours studying the core samples and was unable to find anything other than bacteria and microorganisms living within.

“There is nothing living in these cores other than bacteria,” she said. “I’ve yet to see a living shrimp, a living worm, nothing.”

Studies conducted by the University of Georgia and the University of South Florida caused controversy back in August when they found that almost 80 percent of the oil that leaked from BP’s well is still out in the waters of the Gulf.

Their report stood in stark contrast to that of the federal government, which on Aug. 4 declared that 74 percent of the oil was gone, having broken down or been cleaned up.

One Response to “Oil from BP Spill Pooled on Bottom; Oil Found as Far as 70 Miles from Site; Only Bacteria Seen Alive in Samples”

  1. Eileen says:

    Yes, the oil is gone, just like the buildings in New York were blown up by terrorists on 9/11. Funny how this “oil spill” story has moved off the papers, and the net. It didn’t happen. Right.
    NPR covered this story Friday but I shut it off after that.
    What does it mean that only bacteria are in the samples? Are they oil eating bacteria? Are these bacteria that feed off of dead creatures, such as the carcasses of whales, porpoises, dolphin, fish, shrimp or whatever life was there on the sea floor? Or is the presence of only bacteria mean its a dead zone down there? I guess the latter.
    When in Portland, Oregon last week I read that walruses dive to 4,000 feet. What other critters that feed in the Gulf are dead or poisoned by oil now?
    Are we supposed to now look away while the creatures in the Gulf and the people living around it are going through their death throes? Nobody likes death. It happens toeverything on the planet. But when death occurs from a man made disaster I think all of should be on our toes. When everything in the news all of sudden goes quiet is when the “Real” deal is going down. Is it mass death in the Gulf? If it weren’t why so quiet on the news from our southern shores?
    The media manipulators have a karma they must live through too. Gawdess bless them. They too while go through the “valley of the shadow of death.” No one gets out here alive.

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