Undersea Oil Adrift in Gulf May Create Oxygen ‘Dead Zones’

[cal04]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-31/undersea-oil-adrift-in-gulf-may-create-oxygen-dead-zones-.html

The millions of gallons of oil leaking from a broken well a mile under the Gulf of Mexico may create oxygen-depleting dead zones below the ocean, killing sea life and upsetting the region’s ecology for decades, scientists say.

BP Plc’s oil spill, the biggest in U.S. history, has been sprayed with 950,000 gallons of chemicals on the surface and near the seabed to dissolve the oil into water. The amount of dispersants used is unprecedented and the behavior of the dissolved oil unknown, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has said.

“There is great, great concern of the subsurface nature of this event, of the amount of dispersants and what this means to the entire ecosystem,” Roger Helm, Chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Division of Environmental Quality, said at a press conference. “This is going to be groundbreaking science.”

A government team appointed by the Coast Guard estimates oil has been spilling from the well at a rate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day. That could increase as much as 20 percent when BP makes its next attempt to control the leak by sawing off a damaged pipe. Within the week, BP plans to reconnect the pipe and funnel oil to a ship on the surface.

[Swamp Rat]

1. k&r

[Poll_Blind]

2. Have I given the big speech about how this oil could literally kill off...

...an entire vertical zone of the water column in the Gulf of Mexico? No? That's it. Certain sealife lives in certain areas of the water column. For instance, let's say giant squid and other weird stuff lives mostly way down deep in the water column. They don't really come up much, if at all, and then probably only at night. Other things, like sport fish, live pretty much their whole lives in a range fairly close to the surface.

The atomized oil (atomized into tiny tiny little droplets from the 10,000 PSI or however hard it's being pushed out those pipes) will move up just like the big globs of oil will, to the surface.

However, much much more slowly. Basically, the good news is if just some specific range of the water column of the Gulf has to die because of this. However, because of the tiny particulates of oil I just mentioned, which move to the surface, but much, much more slowly, it could, like, actually kill of more than I care to describe without having had a stiff drink.

PB