Sea Life Flourishes in the Gulf

National Review Online ^ | November 15, 2010 | Lou Dolinar

[thackney]

I agree if you coat the eggs in oil, they will die.

But what you fail to grasp is 3 parts per million is not coating eggs. And was the localized concentration of the overhyped underwater oil plume.

Read the actual details of the reports that measured the plume. That was why it could not be seen with the eye. It was barely dectable at all.

[thackney]

The dispersant product is Corexit, not Corexita. I’ll trust the manufacture of the product to get the name right.

http://www.nalco.com/applications/4348.htm

[PapaBear3625]

If you refer to the WSJ link I posted earlier, you’ll find I spelled it correctly. Unless you want to tell the WSJ that they got it wrong.

Yes they did spell it wrong. Corexit is what the manufacturer calls it, and they're the ones who came up with the name. If the WSJ author can't get the name right (spelling it two different ways in the same blog post), then that calls his carefulness into question.

BTW, he spelled it Corexita in one place, and Corexit (the correct name) in another. You spelled it Corexia and Corexita (both wrong).

Cheers!

[PapaBear3625]

BTW, I wouldn’t have made an issue of the spelling, but it delayed me in being able to google the facts about it, until I found the right spelling.

[shield]

There has always been seepage of oil in the Gulf and warm Gulf waters handle oil differently. When there was a large oil spill on the Mississippi...a lot of the oil ended up on farm lands...farmers wouldn’t let it be cleaned up...they knew organisms would eat the oil helping the soil to become rich in nutrients...so all these enviromentalist...are proving to be nuts...

[Wonder Warthog]

"Just because the microbes ate the oil does not mean the oil disappeared. Oil breaks down into it's basic forms such as benzine etc which is deadly to humans. The fish eventually ate the microbes."

True ignorance at its best. The bacteria break down the oil (eventually) into CO2 and H2O. "Benzine" (actually correctly spelled "benzene") is excellent "bacteria food". They love it. If bacteria eat it, IT'S GONE.

[Wonder Warthog]

"One of the features of Corexia is to take the lighter fractions, that would normally cling to the surface (as you point out) and PUSH them to the ocean floor."

Incorrect. Corexit causes the oil to break up into very, very tiny drops instead of "sticking together" in slicks as it typically does. These microscopic oil drops have many orders of magnitude more surface area than the original oil, which give far greater access to the oil by bacteria.

The more the bacteria can reach the oil, the faster they will "eat" it, and the faster it will disappear.....GONE, destroyed, "not oil" any more, but parts of the bacteria (fats, proteins, carbohydrates) themselves. The now "over-fed" bacteria do what bacteria always do in such circumstances.....they fission into TWO bacteria.

Lots more bacteria means a much larger than usual "base" of the food chain. Which means more krill and other micro-critters, when means more of those what eats'em. The Gulf will be fantastically productive over the next few years, not dead.