Scientists Find Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/us/16oil.html

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”

greedy bastards.

:-(

probably sink to the floor of the ocean. there it will sit poisoning the food chain. this oil will not go away until its physically removed and I have yet to hear how that will be done. what doesn't float away will sink and get ready for kill offs, genetic defects in fish and all kinds of lingering hell. I wonder what kind of place people end up in the afterlife having done shit like this. How can you apologize to the universe for this?

It's easier to downplay the significance of a spill when it isn't visible on the surface. See BP's Hayward.

Watch for it: the fascists will downplay this by saying that there were dead zones in the Gulf prior to the spill.

Sounds like BP is draining a chunk of that massive pool under the gulf.

Idiots are so smart they are turning the world inside out.

we have well & truly blown it



The Dead Gulf. Ironically nowhere near The Dead Sea.

In the sea for an oxygen depleting substance and not be prepared for a worst case scenerio? It's equivalent to constructing a 40+ story building that could collapse if one or two cubicals catches fire.

Some shit is too obvious teh ignore

Welcome to DU! :hi:

Just callin out the obvious:)

self-acknowledged SOCIOPATHIC entities to engage in such reckless opeerations?

Just not survivable.

...no, that is not a joke, satire, lampooning, etc. It's the truth.

Permission to borrow it for my collection?

Mind if I share this one with a few friends?

Obama Administration is getting too close to the engineers/manufacturers of the 9-11, Saddam Hussein, Recent depression, and all the rest of the shit that has happened since the coup of 2000. There. I've said it and you know what? I don't feel any better. :evilfrown: on edit! :tinfoilhat:

:wow::nuke:

I can’t believe it is true because of the source.

.

Oil floats. Why is it under the water?

.

Oil NATURALLY seeps into the ocean ALL THE TIME!

NYT needs to prove that, if this is true, that ANY of it was caused by man!

.

Hard to know what to believe. Environmental “scientists” are proven liars.

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More lies...........oil floats

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This isn’t as bad as what is coming...

Revelation 8:8&9, “The second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood,

9 and a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and a third of the ships were destroyed.”

these gushing pipes from the public for three weeks!
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/47660

The White House allowed BP to hide its video feed of a gushing oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico from the public for three weeks, all the while that same video played live in the White House Situation Room, ABC reports.

This startling revelation comes just as Obama prepares to get really angry in public about the spill – just in time to cover up his administration’s collusion with BP to hide the true extent of the massive disaster in the Gulf.

...is why BP would ever allow the gushing-oil footage to EVER be seen. It's their
footage and they don't have to release it if they don't feel like it. BP has been
very controlling with the media, so why release the most damning and terrifying
footage--which shows that oil pipe gushing out tremendous amounts of oil.

That footages also enables scientists and other experts to better estimate how much
oil is leaking, thus revealing that BP has been underestimating the amount of
oil flowing and the extent of the crisis.

Anyone else want to guess why BP would do this, when they don't have to and when it is
not in their best interests?

Are we supposed to be "shocked and awed"?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill

Scientists have found huge plumes of oil lurking under the surface of the water in the Gulf of Mexico, as BP hit a snag in its latest effort to slow down the oil blasting out of a broken undersea pipe.

At least 210,000 gallons of oil a day has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico since an oil rig exploded April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven people were killed in the blast.

(snip)
Three or four large plumes have been found, at least one that is 10 miles long and a mile wide, said Samantha Joye, a marine science professor at the University of Georgia.

(snip)
These researchers were also testing the effects of large amounts of subsea oil on oxygen levels in the water. The oil can deplete oxygen in the water, harming plankton and other tiny creatures that serve as food for a wide variety of sea critters.

(snip)
"It could take years, possibly decades, for the system to recover from an infusion of this quantity of oil and gas," Joye said. "We've never seen anything like this before. It's impossible to fathom the impact."

when they have a source of organic carbon - in this case petroleum and methane.

This will allow these critters to consume a substantial fraction of these organics over time and consume lots of oxygen.

There will also be high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide in that plume that will oxidize more oxygen - through biotic and abiotic reactions.

Low oxygen concentrations could potentially mobilize toxic metals as well.

These deep waters reoxygenate at very low rates - so this oxygen plume will persist for a long time.

If in situ weathering of subsurface petroleum produces high density "tar balls" they will also deposit organic carbon and toxic substances over wide areas of the seafloor - with all the nasty effects they can produce.

This spill is unlike any previous disaster - and of much greater magnitude.

and its effects will persist for a long long time.

:thumbsdown:

:kick:

:mad: