[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

"The 2nd Impeachment: Trump’s Popularity Still Scares Them to Death"

"President Badass"

"Jasmine Crockett's Train Wreck Interview Was a Disaster"

"How Israel Used Spies, Smuggled Drones and AI to Stun and Hobble Iran"

There hasn’T been ... a single updaTe To This siTe --- since I joined.

"This Is Not What Authoritarianism Looks Like"

America Erupts… ICE Raids Takeover The Streets

AC/DC- Riff Raff + Go Down [VH1 Uncut, July 5, 1996]

Why is Peter Schiff calling Bitcoin a ‘giant cult’ and how does this impact market sentiment?

Esso Your Butt Buddy Horseshit jacks off to that shit

"The Addled Activist Mind"

"Don’t Stop with Harvard"

"Does the Biden Cover-Up Have Two Layers?"

"Pete Rose, 'Shoeless' Joe Reinstated by MLB, Eligible for HOF"

"'Major Breakthrough': Here Are the Details on the China Trade Deal"

Freepers Still Love war

Parody ... Jump / Trump --- van Halen jump

"The Democrat Meltdown Continues"

"Yes, We Need Deportations Without Due Process"

"Trump's Tariff Play Smart, Strategic, Working"

"Leftists Make Desperate Attempt to Discredit Photo of Abrego Garcia's MS-13 Tattoos. Here Are Receipts"

"Trump Administration Freezes $2 Billion After Harvard Refuses to Meet Demands"on After Harvard Refuses to Meet Demands

"Doctors Committing Insurance Fraud to Conceal Trans Procedures, Texas Children’s Whistleblower Testifies"

"Left Using '8647' Symbol for Violence Against Trump, Musk"

KawasakiÂ’s new rideable robohorse is straight out of a sci-fi novel

"Trade should work for America, not rule it"

"The Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court Race – What’s at Risk for the GOP"

"How Trump caught big-government fans in their own trap"

‘Are You Prepared for Violence?’

Greek Orthodox Archbishop gives President Trump a Cross, tells him "Make America Invincible"

"Trump signs executive order eliminating the Department of Education!!!"

"If AOC Is the Democratic Future, the Party Is Even Worse Off Than We Think"

"Ending EPA Overreach"

Closest Look Ever at How Pyramids Were Built

Moment the SpaceX crew Meets Stranded ISS Crew

The Exodus Pharaoh EXPLAINED!

Did the Israelites Really Cross the Red Sea? Stunning Evidence of the Location of Red Sea Crossing!

Are we experiencing a Triumph of Orthodoxy?

Judge Napolitano with Konstantin Malofeev (Moscow, Russia)

"Trump Administration Cancels Most USAID Programs, Folds Others into State Department"

Introducing Manus: The General AI Agent

"Chinese Spies in Our Military? Straight to Jail"

Any suggestion that the USA and NATO are "Helping" or have ever helped Ukraine needs to be shot down instantly

"Real problem with the Palestinians: Nobody wants them"

ACDC & The Rolling Stones - Rock Me Baby

Magnus Carlsen gives a London System lesson!

"The Democrats Are Suffering Through a Drought of Generational Talent"

7 Tactics Of The Enemy To Weaken Your Faith

Strange And Biblical Events Are Happening

Every year ... BusiesT casino gambling day -- in Las Vegas


Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

United States News
See other United States News Articles

Title: Major Study Proves Oil Plume That's Not Going Away
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
URL Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie ... AULT&CTIME=2010-08-19-14-49-06
Published: Aug 19, 2010
Author: By SETH BORENSTEIN
Post Date: 2010-08-19 15:09:45 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 7674
Comments: 43

WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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 most worrisome part is the slow pace at which the oil is breaking down in the cold, 40-degree water, making it a long-lasting but unseen threat to vulnerable marine life, experts said.

Earlier this month, top federal officials declared the oil in the spill was mostly "gone," and it is gone in the sense you can't see it. 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."

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.

With more than 57,000 of these measurements, the scientists mapped a huge plume in late June. The components of oil were detected in a flow that measured more than a mile wide and more than 650 feet from top to bottom.

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.

For much of the summer, the mere existence of underwater plumes of oil was the subject of a debate that at times pitted outside scientists against federal officials who downplayed the idea of plumes of trapped oil. Now federal officials say as much as 42 million gallons of oil may be lurking below the surface in amounts that are much smaller than the width of a human hair.

While federal officials prefer to describe the lurking oil as "an ephemeral cloud," the Woods Hole scientists use the word "plume" repeatedly.

The study conclusively shows that a plume exists, that it came from the BP well and that it probably never got close to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, Camilli said. It is probably even larger than 22 miles long, but scientists had to stop measuring because of Hurricane Alex.

Earlier this week a University of South Florida team reported oil in amounts that were toxic to critical plant plankton deep underwater, but the crude was not necessarily in plumes. Those findings have not been reviewed by other scientists or published.

The plume is probably still around, but moving west-southwest of the BP well site at about 4 miles a day, Camilli said.

While praising the study that ended on June 28, Murawski said more recent observations show that the cloud of oil has "broken apart into a bunch of very small features, some them much farther away." Texas A&M's McKinney said marine life can suffer harm whether it is several smaller plumes or one giant one.

NOAA redirected much of its sampling for underwater oil after consulting with Woods Hole researchers. The federal agency is now using the techniques that the team pioneered with a robotic sub and an underwater mass spectrometer, Murawski said.

Previous attempts to define the plume were "like watching the Super Bowl on a 12-inch black-and-white TV and we try to bring to the table a 36-inch HD TV," said Woods Hole scientist Chris Reddy. The paper, fast-tracked for the world of peer-reviewed science, was written on a boat while still in the Gulf, he said.

Reddy said he could not yet explain why the underwater plume formed at that depth. But other experts point to three factors: cold water, the way the oil spewed from the broken well, and the use of massive amounts of dispersants to break up the oil before it gets to the surface.

The decision to use 1.8 million gallons of dispersants amounted to an environmental trade-off - it meant less oil tainting the surface, where there is noticeable and productive life, but the risk of longer-term problems down below.

At a federal science conference, officials looked at the relative risks and decided "it was worth the effort" to use dispersants, Murawski said.

About 7 percent of the oil from the leaked well went into this particular plume, said Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia. Given the slow rate at which the oil is degrading in the cold water, she and others said it is too early to even think about closing the books on the spill: "The full environmental impacts of the spill will thus not be felt for some time."

---

Online:

www.sciencemag.org Subscribe to *Spill-Baby-Spill*

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 7.

#6. To: Brian S (#0)

And of course us Dirty Fuckin Hippies were correct on this one as well: (when you're looking at the answers in the back of the book, it really isn't that difficult to reverse engineer the problem 8D:

"And with the Bay Charman oil leak, more than 50% of the oil stayed below the surface of the ocean. [As I've previously pointed out, the US Minerals Management Service and a consortium of oil companies, including BP, found that as little as 2% of the oil which spill from deepwater wells ever makes it to the surface of the ocean. And the use of dispersant might decrease that number still further].

WB: I have previously argued that nuking the well would be a bad idea. What do you think?

Bea: [Bea agreed that nuking the well would be counter-productive. He told me a story about a leaking deepwater well that he was involved in killing.

****A NUCLEAR PACKAGE was on its way to the well site *****

but - fortunately - the well stopped by itself before a nuke was deployed. I'm not sure whether this is classified information, so I won't disclose the name of the well. Bea also discussed alternatives in the form of high-pressure, high-temperature conventional explosives, echoing what Bill Clinton said recently].

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-08-20   9:02:13 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: All (#6)

The next Cat 3/5's will be catastrophe.

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-08-20   9:03:03 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 7.

#8. To: mcgowanjm (#7)

If you want someone to listen to you stop saying so much and try not being a fucking lunatic.

Biff Tannen  posted on  2010-08-20 09:07:03 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


End Trace Mode for Comment # 7.

TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

Please report web page problems, questions and comments to webmaster@libertysflame.com