Oil from BP spill settling on Gulf floor
It seems alot of the oil from the massive BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico has ended up on the Gulf sea floor rather than on American beaches. Scientists are finding the oil has settled at the bottom and is in some cases a couple of inches thick. The latest findings show that while the federal government initially proclaimed much of the spilled oil gone, now it's not so clear.
Oil at least two inches thick was found Sunday night and Monday morning about a mile beneath the surface. Under it was a layer of dead shrimp and other small animals, said University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye, speaking from the helm of a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico.
The oil is being found at depths divers cannot go. The ocean is a cold and dark world there. Yet scientists say that even though it may be out of sight, oil found there could do significant harm to the strange creatures that dwell in the depths, tube worms, tiny crustaceans and mollusks, single-cell organisms and fish with bulging eyes and skeletal frames.
"I expected to find oil on the sea floor," Joye said Monday morning in a ship-to-shore telephone interview. "I did not expect to find this much. I didn't expect to find layers two inches thick. It's weird the stuff we found last night. Some of it was really dense and thick."
And the look of the oil, its state of degradation, the way it settled on freshly dead animals all made it unlikely that the crude was from the millions of gallons of oil that naturally seep into the Gulf from the sea bottom each year, she said. Later this week, the oil will be tested for the chemical fingerprints that would conclusively link it to the BP spill.
"It has to be a recent event," Joye said. "There's still pieces of warm bodies there."
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