More confirmation, DeSoto Canyon, and areas where Obama or his daughters are unlikely to swim.Researchers warn that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a bigger mess than the government claimsBy SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer – Tue Aug 17, 9:30 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Researchers are warning that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a bigger mess than the government claims and that a lot of crude is lurking deep below the surface, some of it settling perhaps in a critical undersea canyon off the Florida Panhandle.
The evidence of microscopic amounts of oil mixing into the soil of the canyon was gathered by scientists at the University of South Florida, who also found poisoned plant plankton — the vital base of the ocean food web — which they blamed on a toxic brew of oil and dispersants.
Their work is preliminary, hasn't been reviewed by other scientists, requires more tests to confirm it is BP's oil they found, and is based on a 10-day research cruise that ended late Monday night. Scientists who were not involved said they were uncomfortable drawing conclusions based on such a brief look.
But those early findings follow a report on Monday from Georgia researchers that said as much as 80 percent of the oil from the spill remains in the Gulf. Both groups' findings have already been incorporated into lawsuits filed against BP.
Both groups paint a darker scenario than that of federal officials, who two weeks ago announced that most of the oil had dissolved, dispersed or been removed, leaving just a bit more than a quarter of the amount that spewed from the well that exploded in April.
At the White House on Aug. 4, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco said: "At least 50 percent of the oil that was released is now completely gone from the system, and most of the remainder is degrading rapidly or is being removed from the beaches."
That's not what the scientists from South Florida and Georgia found.
"The oil is not gone, that's for sure," University of South Florida's David Hollander said Tuesday. "There is oil and we need to deal with it."
University of Georgia's Samantha Joye said: "It's a tremendous amount of oil that's in the system. ... It's very difficult for me to imagine that 50 percent of it has been degraded."
Marine scientist Chuck Hopkinson, also with the University of Georgia, raised the obvious question:
"Where has all the oil gone? It hasn't gone anywhere. It still lurks in the deep."NOAA spokesman Justin Kenney defended his agency's calculations, saying they are "based on direct measurements whenever possible and the best available scientific estimates where direct measurements were not possible." But the vast majority of it is based on "educated scientific guesses," because unless the oil was being burned or skimmed, measurements weren't possible, NOAA response scientist Bill Lehr said earlier this month.
What is happening in the Gulf is the outcome of a decision made early on in the fighting of the spill: to use dispersants to keep the surface and beaches as clean as possible, at the expense of keeping oil stuck below the surface, said Monty Graham, a researcher at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama who was not part of the latest work. Oil degrades far more slowly in cooler, deeper waters than it would at the surface.
At the surface and the top 100 feet or so, it is obvious why oil is harmful, fouling marshes and hampering sea turtles, fish, birds and other life. Deep down, the effects are subtler, less direct. Oil at that depth can chip away at the base of the food web — plant plankton — and that could cause animals to go hungry. Reduced oxygen levels from natural gas and oil could also starve creatures of oxygen.
At depths of 900 to 3,300 feet, the University of South Florida researchers found problems with plant plankton. About two-fifths of the samples showed "some degree of toxicity."
"We found general phytoplankton health to be poor," Hollander said. By comparison, in non-oiled southern parts of the Gulf, the plant plankton were healthy, researchers said.
That makes sense because past research has shown that when oil when gets into the cell membranes of plankton, it causes all sorts of problems, said Paul Falkowski, a marine scientist at Rutgers University who was not part of the research. However, he said plant plankton don't live long anyway. They have about a week's lifespan, he said, and in a few months this insult to the base of the food web could be history.
Still, the brew that is poisoning the plankton may linger and no one knows for how long, Hollander said.
The Florida researchers used ultraviolet light to illuminate micro-droplets of oil deep underwater. When they did that, "it looked like a constellation of stars," Hollander said.
He also found the oil deposited in the sea bottom near the edges of the significant DeSoto Canyon, about 40 miles southwest of Panama City, Fla., suggesting oil may have settled into that canyon. The canyon is an important mixing area for cold, nutrient-laden water and warmer surface water. It is also key for currents and an important fisheries area.
"Clearly the oil down in the abyss, there's nothing we can do about it," said Ed Overton of Louisiana State University. He said the environment at the surface or down to 100 feet or so is "rapidly going back to normal," with shrimpers starting their harvest. But oil below 1,000 feet degrades much more slowly, he said.
Joye has measured how fast natural gas, which also spewed from the BP well, can degrade in water, and it may take as much as 500 days for large pools to disappear at 3,000 feet below the sea. That natural gas starves oxygen from the water, she said.
"You're talking about a best-case situation of a year's turnover time," Joye said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spillScientists Say as Much as 79% of Oil Remains in Gulf of MexicoBy Kim Chipman - Aug 18, 2010
A group of scientists says as much as 79 percent of BP Plc’s leaked oil remains in the Gulf of Mexico, challenging an Obama administration assessment that the crude is largely gone or rapidly disappearing.
Most of the oil that leaked from BP’s Macondo well from April 20 to July 15 is still beneath the water’s surface, five scientists including Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia in Athens, concluded in a memo made public yesterday. The researchers say they drew upon the U.S. government’s study while reaching different conclusions.
The Obama administration’s Aug. 4 report indicated that almost three-fourths of the crude that leaked has disappeared or soon will be eaten by bacteria. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has said at least half of the oil released is now “completely gone.”
Chemist Dana Wetzel said the administration’s conclusion felt like the “closing credits of a movie.”“It’s like they were saying ‘the end,’” Wetzel, program manager at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, said in an interview last week. “I’d say we have just gotten through setting up the plot.”
The government and independent scientists involved in the administration’s report “have been clear that oil and its remnants left in the water represent a potential threat, which is why we continue to rigorously monitor, test and access short- and long-term ramifications,” Justin Kenney, a NOAA spokesman, said today in a statement. He also challenged the calculations used by the administration critics.
Oil Still There
Charles Hopkinson, a University of Georgia marine scientist and one of the five researchers, said plumes of oil dispersed underwater remain a danger.
“One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless,” he said in a statement released yesterday. “The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade. We are still far from a complete understanding of what its impacts are.”
Other scientists agree with the government that the oil has largely dissipated.
“I don’t think it’s still lurking out there,” Edward Overton, an environmental chemist and professor emeritus at Louisiana State University, said in an interview last week.
‘Incredible’ Resiliency
“The Gulf is incredible in its resiliency and ability to clean itself up,” said Overton, who served as a technical reviewer for the administration’s report. “I think we are going to be flabbergasted by the little amount of damage that has been caused by this spill.” 
The leak began after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by London-based BP exploded off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 workers and oiling as much as 650 miles of coastline.
The scientists who said that as much as 79 percent of the oil is still in the Gulf of Mexico said
their estimates don’t include oil known to have washed into coastal wetlands because such crude is too difficult to measure, according to the memo, dated Aug. 11 and written by Hopkinson.
The scientists also said they reached their estimates by assuming about 4.1 million barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico, 800,000 barrels fewer than reported by the government, because the researchers didn’t include oil that was piped directly from the well to surface ships.
“The report neglects the oil contained directly from the wellhead, which shifts the baseline numbers so that direct comparison” can’t be made with the administration’s calculations, Kenney of NOAA said in the statement.
Obama’s Florida Visit
President Barack Obama and administration officials have emphasized positive news about the Gulf region since the flow of oil from the biggest U.S. spill was halted.
Obama and his family traveled to Florida’s Gulf coast on Aug. 14 in a bid to provide the region with an economic boost. The president, who took a swim with daughter Sasha, said beaches along the coast are clean and open for business and the seafood is safe. Obama also said he won’t be satisfied until the environment along the Gulf has been restored.
“Mother Nature did some nice work for us in terms of evaporation and dissolution of the oil in the water,” Carol Browner, Obama’s top environmental adviser, said earlier this month.Florida Scientists
Scientists from the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg said in a separate study that they have seen evidence oil observed underwater has become poisonous to marine life.
The oil was found in the “critical” DeSoto Canyon that supports spawning grounds for commercially important fish species on the West Florida Shelf, according to an e-mailed statement from the school today.
Robert Weisberg, a scientist at the university, said today that it’s not yet known how the oil remaining in the Gulf of Mexico may affect the ecosystem.
“There is subsurface oil,” he said in an interview. “I don’t care what anyone says. But the truth is we really don’t know yet about the concentration levels.”
