The New York Times has a disturbing article on the size of the oil spill underwater, where Congressman Miller and BP don’t want us to look. Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet (imagine the length of a football field) thick in spots.
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,†said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.â€
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
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