Posted on 08/24/2010 2:24:33 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The Gulf of Mexico ecosystem was ready and waiting for something like the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and seems to have made the most of it, a new scientific study suggests.
Petroleum-eating bacteria - which had dined for eons on oil seeping naturally through the sea floor - proliferated in the cloud of oil that drifted underwater for months after the April 20 accident. They not only outcompeted fellow microbes, they each ramped up their own internal metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible.
The result was a nature-made cleanup crew capable of reducing the amount of oil in the undersea "plume" by half about every three days, according to research published online Tuesday by the journal Science.
The findings, by a team of scientists led by Terry C. Hazen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laborator, in California, help explain one of the biggest mysteries of the disaster - where has all the oil gone?
"What we know about the degradation rates fits with what we are seeing in the last three weeks," Hazen said. "We've gone out to the sites and we don't find any oil but we do find the bacteria."
The findings point to a different conclusion from that drawn by many readers of a study published last week, also in the journal Science. That research, by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute found no reduction in the oxygen content of the gigantic oil plume, suggesting that microbes were consuming the oil very slowly.
The study published Tuesday also suggests indirectly that dispersants used to break the wellhead stream of oil into a mass of sub-microscopic particles may have speeded the cleanup.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
A rare endangered species (like the US middle class)!
Drill, baby, drill! These little guys need food!
LOL!
fyi
If Bush was in office the news would still be terrible.
I read the other day that hurricane Katrina ended up being good for New Orleans after all...
Drill baby drill. Sounds like the disaster was more of a minor natural event. Oil leaked just a little faster and the bottom of the food chain multiplied as it ate it. Guess that means it was a kind of fertilizer that also didn’t overdo it and consume all the oxygen. So we can expect it to expand the whole food chain for a while.
I was wondering if anything could get the anti-drill/anti-US oil/anti-nuke/anti-coal left madder than the spill, and I’ve got my answer—the spill being cleaned up faster and more efficiently than expected. They’re outraged that this isn’t being treated like the end of the world.
But then that brings up questions of what harm, if any, will these bacteria cause? Can they survive in humans or creatures of the sea and do harm?
Some scientists have a LOTS of fun with this disaster, haven't they? When will the realize that God gave us oil for a reason and made critters that can clean up the mess when we spill it. This bodes VERY WELL for drill-baby-drill in our waters.
Anyone who did a little reading would have realized this was the likely outcome. The same thing happened with the IXTOC I in 1979. Gulf spills are completely different than the Exxon Valdez because the gulf has a much more robust eco system due to warmer temps, being farther from land, etc. Exxon Valdez dumped near islands in shallow, frigid water.
Of course this good news will not cause the idiot in the White House to let the hard working folks in the oil drilling business go back to work. he would rather vacation with his elite buddies and golf than allow the ‘little people’ to go back to work. November can’t come soon enough!
Wait a minute. This week the microbes ate the oil. Last week there was a giant hidden plume they found underwater. And the week before, there was no oil to be found. Hmmm.
It may not be a question of depth but of salinity.
A peculiar closing statement, apparently from a disappointed reporter.
Yes.
It's like the weather channel reporters and the global warming hoaxologists that are in a panic because there have not been any Katrinas to report.
Every day that goes by you can fell the panic in their voices.
Adding this :
More evidence that we are simply “gnats on the elephant’s behind” as far as the earth is concerned and not making vast changes to the ecosystem.
Global warming just isn't paying off for the hysteria crowd the way it was supposed to, just like the oil spill is a big disappointment to the eco-whackoes.
"The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the U.C. Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38834330/
I hope this is true for increased oil production. But do we trust Berkley?
Wait till they say the microbes released a massive amount of CO2 digesting the oil. Sped climate change up by 10 years. ;)
Can anyone guess how the Bush-Cheney team would have reacted to this.....I guarantee it wouldn’t have been like the half los-negroes/muslim/who know what-idiot team did.....
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