Marine snow, tiny particles of decayed animal and plant material, accumulate on the bottom of the Gulf at a rate of about a half an inch per century. Scientists have found up to four inches of filthy muck they call a "dirty blizzard" at the bottom of the sea floor that they suspect is a result of the BP's deepwater gusher. This accumulation of filth occurred in a short five months between August and February. Gulf Watchers noticed what seemed to be an awfully lot of marine snow in some of the ROVs' videos.
The filthy gunk is suffocating creatures on the bottom of the sea and is showing no signs of going away. Scientists do not yet know what type of negative impact this will have on the Gulf's food chain.
In yet another BP and government sleight of hand it seems some of those white beaches may not be as pristine as they appear. Sun-bleaching conceals oil levels at ten times normal. One of the scientists opines that this does not pose a health risk but another is sensibly calling for research.
Soon after the BP gusher was plugged last summer, the oil seemed to vanish as if entirely eaten by bacteria, evaporated by hot sun and sea breezes or swept to far reaches of the Gulf of Mexico.
But a two-day scientific gathering at the University of Central Florida last week unveiled several findings that crude oil still troubles the Gulf to a surprising extent.
"Just because you can't see it or touch it doesn't mean it isn't there," said Benjamin Flower, University of South Florida oceanographer.
In the wake of the three-month, 5 billion-barrel blowout, Flower and a team of USF and Eckerd College scientists retrieved dozens of samples from the Gulf's bottom. What they found over several months was that the seafloor, from south of Panama City to south of Alabama, had become coated in many places with a dark muck.
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BP's gush of crude oil may have fed an explosive growth of bacteria and tiny marine organisms. Some of the oil also could have stuck to decaying plant material and sediment from the Mississippi River. The enormous cloud of that fine debris settled eventually on the seafloor.
Researchers fear the potential harm from all of that material on the bottom of the Gulf is the ability of the thick layer to suffocate the worms and other creatures that live in the seafloor and serve an important role in the food chain.
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"Recovery could take decades," Flower said.
The same holds for what may be a tremendous volume of toxic chemicals — benzene, toluene and xylene — that were in the crude oil but dissolved into seawater where it remains, according to analysis by Hollander and others.
What became clear in the Florida Institute of Oceanography meeting is how stymied scientists have been that neither BP nor the federal government recorded environmental conditions or took seawater samples from near where the blowout was taking place until months later.
That lack of information has left them struggling to know for sure if sea-life contamination or harm is from BP's spilled oil and not another source, like natural leaks of petroleum from the seafloor.
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Microbiologist Joel Kostka and biogeochemist Markus Huettel, both of Florida State University, found that the oil was quickly buried under sand deposited by storms and by the force of waves that pushed oil deep into beaches.
Kostka said cleanup crews, under orders to move quickly and salvage the region's hard-hit beach tourism, inadvertently distributed the crude oil far more widely than waves could have.
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"They mixed the contaminated sand with the clean sand and spread that over large areas of the beach," said Kostka, who is assessing the potential long-term harm to the beaches' ecology.
Now those beaches contain a light but easily detected amount of oil — as much as 10 times more than natural levels — although the surfaces of beaches tend to be bleached to a familiar, dazzling white by the sun.
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Helena Solo-Gabriele, associate dean for research at the University of Miami's College of Engineering, urged more study on the potential health concerns from prolonged exposure to low levels of oil in beaches.
Many researchers were troubled by a report from William Patterson, a marine ecologist at the University of West Florida that anglers and scientists were finding fish along Florida's Panhandle with lesions, growths and rotting fins.
That left researchers worried that many forms of sea life, from plankton to dolphins, are being harmed by crude oil cycling through the Gulf's ecosystem.
"In no way is the Gulf fatally injured by the oil spill," said Ian MacDonald, professor of biological oceanography at Florida State University. "But oil is still there, having an ecological effect that is working its way through the system and we still don't know what the final tally is in terms of damage done."
