and wait -- there's more!
22 miles long, 1.2 miles wide and 650 feet tall -- about 60 stories -- 3000 feet underwater!
That's no plume, that's a massive toxic cloud that shows no sign of abating. BP's dispersant legacy. Perhaps it's lucky that it's not showing signs of abating, since that would mean oil-eating microbes would be eating it with an oxygen chaser, and that layer is currently not showing severe oxygen-depletion. We wouldn't want a dead zone at 3000 feet.
But that toxic cloud is still a problem for a very important reason: the "Deep Scattering Layer," or DSL, which is the great, dense, daily dumbwaiter of thick marine life that moves up toward the surface, and then back down again, in a constant cycle.
Moving daily through this toxic cloud.
The best explanation of the DSL I've found recently is in Mother Jones article on the "BP Coverup." The basic premise of the DSL is that a thick layer of tiny marine life -- perhaps more biomass than any other layer -- moves from 3300 feet deep, up to about 600 feet deep, and back, every day, like a living metronome, following the light.
Most of the marine life familiar to us at the surface inhabits the epipelagic zone, the sunlit realm, stretching down to about 600 feet. Yet many whales, dolphins, seals, sea turtles, sharks, manta rays, billfish, and smaller predatory fish are nocturnal hunters, dependent on the mysterious movements of a vast community of organisms known as the deep scattering layer (pdf), or DSL. This aggregation of life forms was unknown until the 1920s, when early hydrographers mapping the ocean with sound encountered a daytime "seafloor" around 3,300 feet, which rose perplexingly toward the surface at night. Named for its echo-reflecting signature, the DSL was eventually recognized by marine biologists in 1948 to be layers of living creatures hiding on the cusp between perpetual twilight and darkness.
...
The lantern fish, bristlemouths, hatchetfish, and crustaceans of the DSL are believed to account for 80 percent of all the biomass in the mesopelagic zone, with lantern fish alone making up some 660 million tons of living fish—perhaps the greatest distribution, population, and species diversity of all ocean fish on the planet. The mesopelagic fauna also includes many kinds of squid, krill, and siphonophores and ctenophores (jellyfish-like animals), as well as worms, sea butterflies, and larvae that comprise the DSL zooplankton. The vast life of the deep scattering layer supports the surface life above it, including the $172 billion global seafood and aquaculture industries.
Every, day, rising through this "plume" of at least 26 square miles, and 60 stories tall.
From PhysOrg's overview of the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Insitution's research on the BP "plume" (well worth visiting -- great animations of this thing):
"If the oxygen data from the plume layer are telling us it isn’t being rapidly consumed by microbes near the well," he said, "the hydrocarbons could persist for some time. So it is possible that oil could be transported considerable distances from the well before being degraded."
...
Reddy said the WHOI team members know the chemical makeup of some of the plume, but not all of it. Gas chromatographic analysis of plume samples confirm the existence of benzene, toluene, ethybenzene, and total xylenes—together, called BTEX at concentrations in excess of 50 micrograms per liter. "The plume is not pure oil," Camilli said. "But there are oil compounds in there."
Something tells me BTEX is not healthy for krill or other living things.
Now, admittedly, the Gulf is immensely bigger than the "plume." And over time -- nobody's quite sure how long -- it will continue to expand and diffuse.
This is what dispersants did -- they broke up the oil into smaller, more... dispersable bits. Down in, y'know, the hidden layers of the ocean. Down below, where the carnage is invisible. And that nobody thinks of as being a giant moving ecosystem.
The toxic impact will be long-lasting, it seems to me.
So what're we going to call this thing? It's going to be around for awhile. "Plume" is too pretty a word.
Black Cloud of Poison? The Toxic Blob? The Great Gulf Stain?