http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=108429&ct=162News Release : WHOI Study Reports Microbes Consumed Oil in Gulf Slick at Unexpected Rates
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August 1 2011
Source: Media Relations
More than a year after the largest oil spill in history, perhaps the dominant lingering question about the Deepwater Horizon spill is, “What happened to the oil?” Now, in the first published study to explain the role of microbes in breaking down the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers have come up with answers that represent both surprisingly good news and a head-scratching mystery.
In research scheduled to be published in the Aug. 2 online edition of Environmental Research Letters, the WHOI team studied samples from the surface oil slick and surrounding Gulf waters. They found that bacterial microbes inside the slick degraded the oil at a rate five times faster than microbes outside the slick—accounting in large part for the disappearance of the slick some three weeks after Deepwater Horizon’s Macondo well was shut off.
At the same time, the researchers observed no increase in the number of microbes inside the slick—something that would be expected as a byproduct of increased consumption, or respiration, of the oil. In this process, respiration combines food (oil in this case) and oxygen to create carbon dioxide and energy.
“What did they do with the energy they gained from this increased respiration?” asked WHOI chemist Benjamin Van Mooy, senior author of the study. “They didn’t use it to multiply. It’s a real mystery,” he said.
…http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/035301
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