MNN - Mother Nature Network

They found the oil.

 

Last week I wrote that some scientists suspected that giant plumes of oil could be hidden and lurking beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Due to the extreme depth of the leak (nearly a mile down), some of the lighter-than-water oil was thought to be stabilizing in the water column far short of reaching the surface.

 

They were right- scientists are now finding giant oil plumes running deep in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

 

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye told the New York Times. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

 

One oil plume being tracked is as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick.

 

That is an almost unimaginable amount of oil. Think about that- take an area 10 miles long and 3 miles wide (300 square miles), build a 30 story wall around it, then fill it with oil, and then dump it into the ocean. For comparisons sake- Manhattan island is around 33 square miles.

 

And that's just one plume.

 

These findings seem to support the new estimates of up to 100,000 barrels of oil being leaked out a day (that's Exxon Valdez every couple of days or so). BP is maintaining the original estimate of 5,000 barrels a day, but it's in their best interest to keep the numbers as low as possible, so their numbers have no credibility and should be thrown right out the door.

 

These oil plumes are BAD news. They're killing everything in their path, sucking the oxygen out of the water, and when they eventually reach shallower waters and beaches, they will coat and kill all they touche.

 

The world needs a corporate death penalty and BP should be the first sent up to the chopping block. Sell off its assets, pay the cleanup bills, and send the stockholders home with whatever is left over. BP's actions are a gross criminal violation of us all and they deserve to pay the ultimate penalty- BP should be dissolved as a corporation (as should any other company who screws up as badly as they have).