gunDriller
24th October 2010, 05:27 AM
http://gulfblog.uga.edu/
"The sediments we collected today were similar at the bottom — gray muddy clay — but the upper few cm consisted of oil floc — we call it “oil aggregate snow”, because it settled down to the water column to the seafloor just like snow falls from the sky to the ground.
If you take a close look at the snow layer, small oil aggregates are visible. Also visible are (much larger) pteropod shells (which must have been recently deposited because the shells dissolve rapidly) and remnants of zooplankton (skeletons) and benthic infauna (dead worms and their tubes). Microbial aggregates are visible and abundant but the normal invertebrate fauna you’d expect to see in these sediments were not present."
http://gulfblog.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Oil_on_seafloor1-222x300.jpg
the top part in the picture, that's about 1 5/8" thick, is the oil "snow" from the BP Disaster.
the dispersant broke it up into tiny droplets which now cover parts of the floor of the Gulf.
http://www.kentucky.com/2010/10/04/1464251/oil-on-seabed-in-gulf-may-pose.html
/\ newspaper article on the same research
http://gulfblog.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/GC185_OilCores1-188x300.jpg
/\ sediment samples from a naturally occurring oil seep.
so basically the BP Disaster experiment continues. out of sight, but very real.
"The sediments we collected today were similar at the bottom — gray muddy clay — but the upper few cm consisted of oil floc — we call it “oil aggregate snow”, because it settled down to the water column to the seafloor just like snow falls from the sky to the ground.
If you take a close look at the snow layer, small oil aggregates are visible. Also visible are (much larger) pteropod shells (which must have been recently deposited because the shells dissolve rapidly) and remnants of zooplankton (skeletons) and benthic infauna (dead worms and their tubes). Microbial aggregates are visible and abundant but the normal invertebrate fauna you’d expect to see in these sediments were not present."
http://gulfblog.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Oil_on_seafloor1-222x300.jpg
the top part in the picture, that's about 1 5/8" thick, is the oil "snow" from the BP Disaster.
the dispersant broke it up into tiny droplets which now cover parts of the floor of the Gulf.
http://www.kentucky.com/2010/10/04/1464251/oil-on-seabed-in-gulf-may-pose.html
/\ newspaper article on the same research
http://gulfblog.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/GC185_OilCores1-188x300.jpg
/\ sediment samples from a naturally occurring oil seep.
so basically the BP Disaster experiment continues. out of sight, but very real.