May 15 -- “Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf”

Orpheus Reed

The New York Times this evening is reporting scientist who have been out on the Gulf on the research vessel Pelican, have been finding “giant plumes of oil forming under the gulf” in deep water from 2300 to 4200 feet (which is almost to the sea floor) . Some of these plumes are of tremendous size- one was “10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots.”

Samantha Joye, a scientist from the University of Georgia was quoted in the Times saying, “There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The article says that scientists are very worried the plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in Gulf water, and it this could cause oxygen levels to fall to the point where aquatic life in these areas is killed off. Dr. Joye said the mission had found that near some of the plumes, oxygen had already dropped 30%”

“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.” There is real concern, that these plumes can create large dead zones in the Gulf, which is already plagued by dead zones (zones where no life exists) at certain times of year.

This finding is extremely worrisome, and points to the likelihood that the deep water affects of this spill, including the use of chemical dispersants, are far greater than officially acknowledged and could well be already having potentially catastrophic impacts on marine life, even if it the pool of oil is still mainly off shore.