Oil-eating bacteria are present in significant quantities, even in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and may be to divide the oil from submerged oil spill Deepwater Horizon faster than previously thought, scientists reported today.
bacteria were detected in the plume of microscopic droplets of oil more than 3000 meters below the surface, near the blown-out and BP by a group of researchers led by Terry Hazen, senior ecologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Their presence may be overlooked by other researchers, because they are located in different stripes, does not seem to require a lot of oxygen from the water column, unlike most oil-digesting bacteria, scientists say.
W previous test of the plume, researchers measured the level of oxygen dissolved in water to determine the activity of the bacteria.
Conventional methods for assessing the biodegradability, which are based on the level of oxygen, can ignore the contribution of these errors, the researchers said in a statement.
The discovery adds a new wrinkle to the debate over the fate of the submerged oil from BPs massive blowout well. In recent weeks, independent scientists have sharply questioned the federal assessment report that the remaining oil from the spill was degrading quickly into the abyss. Federal scientists shifted hard, arguing that their estimates are conservative and based on extensive fieldwork and computer modeling.
latest report, released at the beginning of the Science at the time of the conference in Seattle, does not refer to the quantity of oil that remains in the deep ocean or how much oil is degraded by bacteria. But the results suggest that microbes in the deep waters of the bay, you can quickly adjust to the presence of oil, and can play an important role in breaking down the oil stains which radiate tens of kilometers from the head of BP.
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