New, Giant Oil Plume Seen in Gulf of Mexico
May 28th, 2010Via: AP:
Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama.
The discovery by researchers on the University of South Florida College of Marine Science’s Weatherbird II vessel is the second significant undersea plume recorded since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20.
The thick plume was detected just beneath the surface down to about 3,300 feet (1,000 meters), and is more than 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) wide, said David Hollander, associate professor of chemical oceanography at the school.
Hollander said the team detected the thickest amount of hydrocarbons, likely from the oil spewing from the blown out well, at about 1,300 feet (nearly 400 meters) in the same spot on two separate days this week.
The discovery was important, he said, because it confirmed that the substance found in the water was not naturally occurring and that the plume was at its highest concentration in deeper waters. The researchers will use further testing to determine whether the hydrocarbons they found are the result of dispersants or the emulsification of oil as it traveled away from the well.
The first such plume detected by scientists stretched from the well southwest toward the open sea, but this new undersea oil cloud is headed miles inland into shallower waters where many fish and other species reproduce.
The researchers say they are worried these undersea plumes may be the result of the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil a mile undersea at the site of the leak.
Hollander said the oil they detected has dissolved into the water, and is no longer visible, leading to fears from researchers that the toxicity from the oil and dispersants could pose a big danger to fish larvae and creatures that filter the waters for food.
“There are two elements to it,” Hollander said. “The plume reaching waters on the continental shelf could have a toxic effect on fish larvae, and we also may see a long term response as it cascades up the food web.”
Dispersants contain surfactants, which are similar to dishwashing soap.
A Louisiana State University researcher who has studied their effects on marine life said that by breaking oil into small particles, surfactants make it easier for fish and other animals to soak up the oil’s toxic chemicals. That can impair the animals’ immune systems and cause reproductive problems.
“The oil’s not at the surface, so it doesn’t look so bad, but you have a situation where it’s more available to fish,” said Kevin Kleinow, a professor in LSU’s school of veterinary medicine.
Acid rains, arid souls.
The response to this disaster (or the seeming lack thereof) surpasses the primary disaster in atrociousness in my eyes. Making two atrocities. The lack of response can be laid at the feet of anyone with considerable resources; Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, any billionaire or organization with considerable resources -like say Halliburton. Perhaps especially Halliburton, whose resources also specifically include the expertise needed to address this disaster.
Why cannot they simply pour cement on this spout? Ladle it on. Tons if need be, in a broad blunderbuss approach if accuracy’s an issue. The lack of even trying such is beginning to look mighty damned peculiar…
…As peculiar as the lack of concluding that patently the risks and policies of deep water/offshore drilling must immediately be reappraised with the practice itself immediately halted in the meantime. There is tons of edification brought home here that if ignored bespeaks of deliberate monstrous evil laid horribly bare. If ever incitement to war (war or fill in the blank for yourself) with just cause were more nakedly palpable, I don’t know of it.
I don’t know of anything mankind has ever done in a singular act more dispicable, condemning or condemnable, or damning (in the worst literal sense possible), and this on top of those of not such a singular act such as the plasticizing of the oceans.
It is beginning to be reasonable to consider blowing up the planet to save it [from us]. God help me if the powers that be ever agree with me. They certainly weren’t beyond such thinking with Agent orange, et al, which consequences we only now are re-estimating this many decades down the road.
We are at this point a profane race of such magnitude that surely it cannot escape the awareness of all or any other cognitive race, even if at the remove of another time. The fulmination of this black art of profanity so greatly is pointed directly to such whom would bomb the virgin moon herself for whatever reason. Mankind is condemned to inherit a richly deserved self-loathing that nothing can possibly redeem.
It does seem to me that the powers that be are unconcerned about their legacy. It does seem they know of causes to be so unconcerned, unbelieveable as that truly is. Perhaps it is secret. -I always believed that truth will ultimately out. Recently I’ve heard a new definition of secret though that got me thinking: not just things that are deliberately held unknown but likewise things that are innately unknowable. Like certain causes, not necessarily those of Profanity or so limited, but those as well contrary to anything truly Sacred…
Alien intervention can’t come soon enough for we are certainly alienated enough for it.
Planet Hell comes first with a locked in approach. In chessic terms: zug zwang. If we made God in our image, Jehovah wasn’t anywhere near enough an accurate portrait. Am I too impotently over the top, outraged and verbose? Certainly, but please, is there nowhere one can be? It is bad enough I pour the blood of humans into my gastank but along with the blood of the Earth herself is more than I can biliously fathom. Fathoms upon fathoms at that. Does no human even so much as actually weep? Even myself as I dare ask?
Not fair to post this since I don’t have a link, but read today that BP supplies 40 percent of the Department of Defense oil needs. Hmm. That’s a lot, and that the EPA wanted to debar BP as a contractor because they are so full of it.
If Obama isn’t stepping up to the plate because we need BP to make oil for wars: he is a criminal.
Complicit in this environmental catastrophe.
I am going to Tampa, Fl next weekend for a family get together. We plan to go to say goodbye to the Gulf. The state of Florida and/or FEMA also announced that they have an evacuation plan for Tampa in place.
I don’t think I’ve been this frightened since I was a little kid during the Cuban missile crisis.
My sister and I put by Mason jars of water in our own private bomb shelter. I remember freaking out when planes flew overhead.
Now, I might start dreaming of oily rain. Never did it cross my mind that oil might be the death of me.
Here it is, Eileen:
http://news.muckety.com/2010/05/28/bp-collects-billions-in-us-government-contracts/26301