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Researchers Confirm Subsea Gulf Oil Plumes are from BP Well
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Through a chemical fingerprinting process, University of South Florida researchers have definitively linked clouds of underwater oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to BP's runaway Deepwater Horizon well - the first direct scientific link between the subsurface oil clouds commonly known as "plumes" and the BP oil spill, USF officials said Friday.
Until now, scientists had circumstantial evidence, but lacked that definitive scientific link.
The announcement came on the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that its researchers have confirmed the existence of the subsea plumes at depths of 3,300 to 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf. NOAA said its detection equipment also implicated the BP well in the plumes' creation.
Together, the two studies confirm what in the early days of the spill was denied by BP and viewed skeptically by NOAA's chief - that much of the crude that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon well stayed beneath the surface of the water.
"What we have learned completely changes the idea of what an oil spill is," said chemical oceanographer David Hollander, one of three USF researchers credited with the matching samples of oil taken from the water with samples from the BP well. "It has gone from a two-dimensional disaster to a three-dimensional catastrophe."
The other scientists involved in making the link, USF said, were biological oceanographer Ernst Peebles and geological oceanographer David Naar.
The finding is important because oil that escaped from the mile-deep, blown-out well had been treated with dispersants, which broke the oil in the water column into tiny droplets, and therefore did not form an oil slick at the surface, said Richard H. Pierce, senior scientist and director of the Center for Ecotoxicology at Sarasota's Mote Marine Laboratory.
"It's more readily taken up and absorbed and ingested by marine animals," he explained.
Although dispersed oil degrades more quickly over the long-run, in the short-term, it poses a more toxic threat to marine life, Pierce said.
"So, we've been very concerned, and it is critical USF has verified it," he said.
The full report was not released Friday, but will be available sometime next week, USF spokeswoman Vickie Chachere said.
BP declined to comment on the USF discovery. "We have only seen media reports, and have not yet seen the report and underlying data," BP spokesman Phil Cochrane said in an e-mail.
USF scientists found microscopic droplets of biodegraded oil at varying depths beneath the Gulf's surface, the university said in a statement.
One layer was 100 feet thick; it was found 45 nautical miles north-northeast of the well site, officials said.
The researchers found the plumes after models created by a USF expert in ocean currents, Robert Weisberg, predicted subsurface oil from the Deepwater Horizon well would move toward the north-northeast, USF said.
"The clouds were found near the DeSoto Canyon, a critical area that interacts with Florida's spawning grounds," USF said.
The NOAA study made similar findings. According to the report, which was reviewed by 19 scientists known as the Joint Analysis Group, data collected by five research ships deployed in the Gulf from May 19 to June 19 showed oil suspended in the water between 1,000 and 1,300 meters - about 3,280 feet to 4,265 feet.
The NOAA scientists detected the oil by measuring its fluorescence - many of the droplets are too small to detect otherwise - and said that that measurement linked it to the BP well.
The report said the oil had been detected in heaviest concentrations near the BP well and that its concentrations dropped as the ships moved away from the well, but that not enough samples had been taken to determine the full "horizontal extent" of the plumes.
The report also said the impact of the oil on sealife had yet to be determined. Even at low concentrations, the report said, the oil "might be biologically meaningful" because of the length of time fish and other organisms would be exposed to it.
The report also said that scientists had detected lower levels of dissolved oxygen in the water at depths below 3,280 feet, but that they couldn't determine why the levels were low with certainty. They said the levels were not so low as to be fatal to sealife.
Steven Murawski, chief scientist for NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, said the data confirm that the subsea plumes of oil were the result of the Deepwater Horizon well.
"That's a real smoking gun, as far as we're concerned," he said. "It really is a flow" from the well.
In May, when scientists first reported that they had discovered oil beneath the Gulf's surface and blamed it on the Deepwater Horizon spill, they were denounced by both BP and NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco.
BP CEO Tony Hayward denied that such plumes existed and Lubchenco called the reports "misleading, premature and, in some cases, inaccurate."
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27 Comments so far
Show AllRemember when saddam hussein "gassed his own people"?
That was the statement of the times. Guess who used bio-chemical warfare on its own people? Not to mention the entire ecosystem.
Touche'!
No one who helped with the exxon valdez clean up lived past 50 years old is that right?
RR
For some reason, this article seems to connect with another article on CD today. "Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Fallujah 'Worse Than Hiroshima'"
God! What we have done to our planet, to ourselves. As I've said before, we stabbed Mother Nature in her vitals and she is bleeding to death. Apparently our band-aid is not doing the job. No surprises there.
My guess is that the Oxygen drop may be the start of the death of the phytoplankton that supply the earth, and the sea, with much of its Oxygen.
If, in fact, that is what is happening, then that is killing the food chain at its beginning. As that echoes up through the food chain, there will be fewer fish, etc., and them undernourished and sickly.
I fear the dinosaurs are calling us.
The entire affair is one of the worse crimes against humanity, and the enviroment, I say one of the worse because this type of thing at smaller levels is going on all over the planet. The fact that these plumes have been there all along, and they are finnaly saying it is linked because of the scientific proof ,is so rediculous. They knew it was reguardless, oil plumes from Deepwater, and should have been acting accordingly from the begining. The scientific proof is good for Court but everybody pretending this isn't as bad as it is ,boggels my mind. Tony Hayward, and his bunch need to be arrested. Plus when you willfully do not keep up safety standards, and you purposefully do not mix oil with the seawater in the cooling thing a ma jig,and report after report says you did not shut down operations when warned of several saftey issues, then this is not an ACCIDENT ! No way, no how ! Therefor to kill 11 men and millions of animals and plants, birds etc. and believe me they are dying by the millions, plankton and stuff like those small microbes that many fish eat are dead by the Billions, so the Death of a Planet begins. The scarey thing is this is starting to play like a Hollywood Disaster movie. I wonder how the movie would play out. This is a real disaster though and unfortunately we have proven that we aren't very good in real life at cleaning up disasters.If the Goverment doesn't start making formal criminal charges soon these oil mongors and murderers will just keep killing us all.
In China last year when those baby formula executives killed little Chinese babies, they shot them to death by firing squad. I never thought much of the death penality, but I'm liking it for these guys a lot.
Hahaha! I'm usually one to agree with the motto "Two wrongs don't make a right" but man these fucking BP executives lol.... if not firing squad then some sort of nefarious killing that sends a message out to all the rest of the parasitic bloodsucking buddies in wall st and elsewhere.
my two cents
Peace
I think it's funny that our government and BP denies any connection to the oil plumes until scientific proof, proves it. IT'S OBVIOUS TO US!
"USF scientists found microscopic droplets of biodegraded oil at varying depths beneath the Gulf's surface, the university said in a statement."
biodegraded oil?
Biodegraded oil isn't oil anymore!
It's Corexit treated oil!
The rub here. Or one of them is, i think, that the government o.k'd all of this from the get-go. BP, in a sense, is not the one with liability. If we think about how they kept getting the go ahead from the department of the interior. In a certain sense, the buck stops at the level of the federal government. I think this is why they are covering for each other. The fed is in as deep as BP. And BP probably has less debt and is more liquid, for sure, than the usa.
And we know they have all those military contracts too.
I think there is nothing we can do outside of a national strike. No one in charge is wanting to get to the bottom of this. Nor do they want to know the long term implications and effects. They would want it covered up as much as bp would.
Also, bp has nothing to lose by denying everything possible. It isn't a crime to deny. And they will have scientists paid (i just read this somewhere), to give differing views. The name of the game is correlation. It is highly difficult to prove causation.
My two cents.
peace.
A mere blip in BP's profits. They will obfuscate and downplay any and all science. Feinberg will continue to fleece the little people, making them bow to our corporate master. Yes, but corporations are people according to our Supreme Court jesters? Just people with hundreds of high-powered political and judicial connections. And a hotline to the White House. One would think that Carl-Henric Svanberg and Tony Hayward are U.S. citizens the way they're treated. One would think that Gulf residents are illegals, the way they are treated.
A significant portion of Gulf of Mexico life is degraded, dead, defiled. But the health of BP is sacrosanct. BP's way of life trumps that of fishermen, crabbers, anyone without a well-heeled lawyer and lobbyist.
Please take note. "We" the people no longer matter. It is more important that BP executives retain their annual over-sized earnings while the residents of the Gulf coast suffer unemployment, economic destruction and the loss of their livelihoods and way of life. This is not an anomaly. This is the way it will be. Any problems from Gulf Coast residents will be met by our own police and military, to protect BP's interests. Nothing has changed since Smedley Butler penned his words. Nothing will. Corporations now own every one of us. Get used to it. Your freedoms are all an illusion.
I wonder how much granite will be used to make the headstone for the Gulf?
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
BP is around 39% US owned and supplies the American Military with hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day. You know, if the military actually does go "green" as a recent policy directive has it, the entire consciousness of the military will change. The internal logic of environmentalism and militarism are diametrically opposed and the raison d entre for the military disappears-stealing the resources of the world at a global level, the military will then become redundant. Neat eh? Contains the seeds for it's own destruction just like capitalism itself...crisis of overproduction of all things. Lastly, the general population just might benefit from any advances the military comes up with. Hopefully it won't be better technologies to extract the tar sands and fracking of natural gas-a haliberton technology-so just imagine. Hopefully they get full on with the agenda before we blow ourselves to smitherines chasing after the last reserves of black gold.
RR
latest from bbc:
tony hayward is negotiating his 'exit' from bp and a formal announcement will be made within the next 24 hours.......
i wonder what brought that on???????...................
well whatever their 'crimes' they'll get off scott free................
Wow--WHAT PUNISHMENT!
Tony Hayward is getting rewarded as he 'steps down' as CEO--Hayward, 52, is today locked in meetings with the rest of the BP board about the final details of his financial leaving package, but he is expected to go under basic contractual terms. That means a one year's £1m pay package but a giant pension pot of over £10m, capable of paying out more than half a million pounds a year from the formal retirement age of 60.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/25/tony-hayward-to-quit-bp
Yeah well when he gassed his people he killed like 23 thousand all together over time, we have killed almost one million Iraqis people, how can we even think for a second we are the good guys ? We have certainly done those people no favors ! I bet they long for the days of Sadaam....I would if I were them. Then we hung that guy by the neck until he was dead, claiming the Iraqis did it, but they did it with us pushing them. George Bush should have been right beside the guy.
Researchers Confirm Subsea Gulf Oil Plumes are from Mars.
Duhhhh!