Huge Amounts of Oil Found On Gulf of Mexico Floor

intellitech tips news of a study examining the Gulf of Mexico sea floor in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Marine scientists have found a thick layer of oil, and say it has devastated life there. "Studies using a submersible found a layer, as much as 10cm thick in places, of dead animals and oil, said Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia. Knocking these animals out of the food chain will, in time, affect species relevant to fisheries. She disputed an assessment by BP's compensation fund that the Gulf of Mexico will recover by the end of 2012. ... 'The impact on the benthos was devastating,' she told BBC News. 'Filter-feeding organisms, invertebrate worms, corals, sea fans — all of those were substantially impacted — and by impacted, I mean essentially killed. Another critical point is that detrital feeders like sea cucumbers, brittle stars that wander around the bottom, I didn't see a living (sea cucumber) around on any of the wellhead dives. They're typically everywhere, and we saw none.'"

Comments

Re:Not a big shocker there

[Anonymous Coward]

hey tow the party line

The phrase is "toe the line".

God bless America, where ... ignorance is knowledge

Ah, Irony, MightyMartian is thy name.

Re:No one's surprised.

[EdIII]

If anyone thinks that is just cynical speculation...... look at the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska for a history lesson. This was far, far, far, far worse and you can expect the same sort of BS from BP.

Re:Not a big shocker there

[korean.ian]

According to the AP article linked to in the summary, over a period of 5 dives, the team looked at 2,600 square miles.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gsv8vJ45hWNxvco5tgcPE_iHt6dQ?docId=b0876e788169473cb4fbe2d7ff275ffb

So, not half a square mile, but not the entire Gulf basin either. About half a percent of the total area.

Re:Not a big shocker there

[sgbett]

Quite right, and heres another thing.

I keep a reef tank. Out of interest I did my own extrapolating back when the world was on the brink of environmental melt down at the hands of Mordor... er, I mean BP.

You take the amount of oil spilt, and divide by the amount of water in the GOM.

Then you scale that down to your reef tank, and see if you would be comfortable adding that much oil.

Turns out I couldn't even accurately measure the amount (0.00007ml).

I'd be more than happy to test out having a 'disaster' of that magnitude in my little biotope.

Kind of ruins the 'news' angle though.