An inch or two of oily sediment lies at the bottom of the Gulf.
"And in that layer, she finds recently dead shrimp, worms and other invertebrates."
Admittedly, dead worms aren't likely to headline the national news. But they can effectively symbolize the struggle between environmental stewardship and recklessness for profit.
Joye's findings so far have found oil in depths ranging from 300 to 4,000 feet. Shallower waters, in particular, are potentially important not just for life on the bottom but for the entire marine ecosystem.
"A lot of fish go down to the bottom and eat and then come back up," Hollander says. "And if all their food sources are derived from the bottom, then indeed you could have this impact."
Figuring all that out though, will probably take many years.
The Research Vessel Oceanus, with Samantha Joye, a professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia on board, has been out in the Gulf, hunting for missing oil.
She and her colleagues traveled in a large "X" across the Gulf within a few dozen miles of the well. The have collected hundreds of samples in eight sets, and Joye says they all contain this layer.
"We have to [chemically] fingerprint it and link it to the Deepwater Horizon," she says. "But the sheer coverage here is leading us all to come to the conclusion that it has to be sedimented oil from the oil spill, because it's all over the place."
"It's starting to sound like a tremendous amount of oil. And we haven't even sampled close to the wellhead yet," she says.
There is more than enough evidence in the public domain to know that the BP disaster is in a big way due to recklessness.
The environmental damage may not be forever, and we have no idea still just how profound it will become, but it is clear from this - and countless other events - that the corporate profit incentive will take any risks it thinks it can get away with. And so, it is imperative that we re-regulate industry, and monitor intensely, and transparently.
cross-posted at http://www.worldforallpeople.org