Gulf Oil Threatens an Underwater 'Rainforest'

Gulf Oil Threatens an Underwater 'Rainforest'

www.time.com

The WeatherBird II is not a pretty ship. A boxy, businesslike, 194-ton vessel, it prowls the waters off St Petersburg, Fla. where it competes for attention with the cruise ships and sport yachts and other glamour boats. But the WeatherBird II was the buzz of the Gulf on Friday, after its alarming findings about the extent of the BP oil spill that's spreading invisibly below the surface.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The WeatherBird II expedition, led by SFU chemical oceanographer David Hollander wanted specifically to explore the DeSoto Canyon, a deep erosional valley south of the Florida panhandle and about 20 miles (32 km) northeast of the Deepwater Horizon wreck site. The DeSoto is to the Gulf what a rainforest is to a land-based ecosystem: a densely fertile area where life forms fairly explode. It's the upwellings of nutrient-rich water that make the area so hospitable to fish, coral and other living things. On the surface, the waters of the region look clean, but just below the surface and down to about 3,300 ft. (1 km), Hollander and his team found a six-mi. (9.6 km) wide, 22-mi. (35.4 km) long oil bloom, broken into millions of bits and beads and moving with the current. It had not reached the canyon yet, but it was heading that way.

Well this is not good. Already we can see the damage done to marine life under the surface.

Those places like this canyon, that provide shelter and feeding grounds will be destroyed by this event, regardless of if the leak is stopped now or later.

~Keeper




www.time.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

thanks for that great report. I'm going to link the article on my fb page. So this basically means that the rainforest is being destroyed and I think it would also mean that the ground water stores of the state of Florida surrounding this area would also be tainted. This thread has me wondering what, if any , scientists are saying about the ground water in the surrounding southeastern states eventually being tainted by this.
SnF

The ground water is safe unless the oil comes ashore in rainfall. Oil is far more difficult to mix into fresh water than sea water is. Where it will infiltrate is the salt water marshes and riding on storm surge. By itself it can not flow "upstream"
N.

I'm not surprised as wherever you have large amounts of fish-food on the surface you seem to have a whole spectrum of life beneath it. The BBC's "Blue Planet" was filming dozens of weird and wonderful creatures for the first time, when all they had to do was just sink a few underwater cameras, into some of the worlds most used Ocean routes.

Sad, as no doubt the toxic Corexit dispersant BP is using tens of thousands of Gallons a day www.inhabitat.com... will ensure enough oil engulfs their underwater world (when it would otherwise have just remained on the surface). Maybe is the "right thing" because it keeps it away from those damn, helicopter, news camera's!!!
But when you have hurricane season, I bet a lot of this detergent mixture is going to suddenly get washed out of the depths, and so therefore get onto the surface anyway. Worst thing is when disturbed it will still sink, meaning it will have a proper 3D effect on ocean life.

I said from the start, that they would better of using no chemicals, and just burning the stuff with a high altitude, nuclear blast!!! Surely it's the only way you could heat killometers of Ocean water (with oil in its surface) to high enough temperatures that ensured the oil was (cleanely) burnt? Also the higher a bomb explodes, the more fallout that gets blasted into space-orbit. This is ok, as increasing the Yeild doesn't increase the fallout, proportionately.

Of course any such move would demand real political courage, and that's something no leader of either DemoRep party has. I doubt even Bush would have done it (after all nuking any type of oil, has got to be some sort of symbolic, "moral crime," against the industry!!)

Interestingly: Had Obama been pressing to nuke the stuff, at least commentator would accuse him of having had his hands, in his pockets! Then again (the extreme right!) of the DemoRep party, could also be looking for a new CND, president!

Paul Ehrlich warned us almost three decades ago about "popping rivets" on a plane. A few at first don't matter. Then there's a point where it definitely does matter!

From 1997

And once again, we must stop calling this disaster a spill. Even the Arabian Gulf 1993 spill, that prompted the idea of using supertankers to skim surface oil to be used for this disaster, was a volume of oil which could be calculated. This is a leak, the volume of which is only estimable. And it's not at tanker level, its 5000 ft in a huge body of water, with effects on this "rain forest". Clean up what's on the surface, there still is left what's below.