It's been nearly two weeks since a cap has stopped the flow of oil from BP's damaged well and as the New York Times reports, oil in the Gulf is rapidly disappearing from view, though concerns remain.
The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion are largely gone, though sightings of tar balls and emulsified oil continue here and there.
Reporters flying over the area Sunday spotted only a few patches of sheen and an occasional streak of thicker oil, and radar images taken since then suggest that these few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the gulf.
John Amos, president of SkyTruth, an environmental advocacy group that sharply criticized the early, low estimates of the size of the BP leak, noted that no oil had gushed from the well for nearly two weeks.
“Oil has a finite life span at the surface,” Mr. Amos said Tuesday, after examining fresh radar images of the slick. “At this point, that oil slick is really starting to dissipate pretty rapidly.”
Despite the disappearing slick, the NYT reports that concerns remain, particularly among Gulf fishermen who worry about toxicity of dispersants and whether oil has settled on the seafloor, both of which could pose a danger to the food chain including shrimp and crab larvae.
According to the Washington Post, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that while oil is biodegrading, it remains in the water column -- though NOAA also says that not much oil has settled on the seafloor.
"The light crude oil is biodegrading quickly," NOAA director Jane Lubchenco said during the response team daily briefing. "We know that a significant amount of the oil has dispersed and been biodegraded by naturally occurring bacteria."
Lubchenco said, however, that both the near- and long-term environmental effects of the release of several million barrels of oil remain serious and to some extent unpredictable.
"The sheer volume of oil that's out there has to mean there are some pretty significant impacts," she said. "What we have yet to determine is the full impact the oil will have not just on the shoreline, not just on wildlife, but beneath the surface."
But much of the oil appears to have been broken down into tiny, microscopic particles that are being consumed by bacteria. Little or none of the oil is on seafloor, she said, but is instead floating in the gulf waters.
Her conclusions come from the work of several NOAA boats now collecting water samples, as well as the analysis of academics brought in to help study the spill effects. The goal, she said, is to get a scientifically sound assessment of the overall environmental effects of the spill.
The Post noted that Lubchenco was careful to reject arguments advanced by BP-funded researchers that the impact of the spill would be minimal, saying that "anyone who classifies the results of the accident as anything less than catastrophic has not been watching."
Or, as is the case of BP, they hope nobody else is watching.