BBC:

Oil from BP’s damaged Gulf of Mexico well is clearing from the sea surface faster than expected, scientists say, 100 days after the disaster began.

Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said much oil had been “biodegraded by naturally occurring bacteria”.

All that matters to these people is the information of the surface, the seen. This type of information has a long history of being unreliable.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

5 replies on “Bacteria to the Rescue”

  2. Bacteria eat the oil, but they use oxygen to do so. The result is a massive anoxic dead zone full of suffocated fish.

  3. Perhaps you would like to include the very next paragraph in your out-of-context post:

    “But concerns remain about the spill’s unseen effects.”

    This is the head of NOAA speaking, not some BP flak. And she is by no means minimizing the situation or suggesting that because the oil isn’t visible on the surface that it isn’t a problem.

  5. #2 has it down pat. Plenty of bacteria have evolved to eat long-chain hydrocarbons, but they usually need oxygen to do so.

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