Apparently Apparel
  • News Watch
  • Market Watch
  • Weather Watch
  • Quake Watch
  • Sky Watch
  • Space Watch
  • Resources
    • Links
    • Gaming
    • Meditate
    • Bill of Rights
    • Privacy Policy
  • Free Energy
  • ZOAT
  • Advertise
  • Contribute
  • Upload News

Apparently Apparel
News Watch

Study: Undersea Bugs Ate Natural Gas Released in Oil Spill

1/8/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY  &
By: Lea Winerman , PBS News

Deep sea bacteria completely devoured much of the natural gas released in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a scientific team concluded Thursday. The findings help build the case that ocean bottom bugs are a natural biofilter that regularly dine on natural seeps of methane, or natural gas, and related chemicals worldwide.

Methane was the most abundant component of the summer oil spill. About 220,000 tons was released from April to July. The finding adds to evidence that deepwater microbes also consumed other "light" crude oil constituents, such as propane and ethanol, released in the spill.

"We expected the methane to persist longer," says study co-author David Valentine of the University of California, Santa Barbara, based on June estimates. By September, he says, "the complete consumption of methane came as a surprise." Measures suggest only 0.01% of the methane released in the spill still lingered at depth.

Intense water pressure and cold temperatures at the spill site, 5,000 feet deep, kept much of the methane trapped in underwater layers, where the microbes could feast on the gas, instead of allowing it to bubble to the surface.

Study samples found that deep water layers formerly laced with methane were filled with evidence of methane-eating bacteria populations that had grown "exponentially" over the summer. The results suggest "bacterial communities may act as a dynamic biofilter that responds rapidly to large-scale (natural gas) inputs into the deep ocean," the study says.

"The Gulf of Mexico has more (oil and natural gas) seeps than practically anywhere in the world, and the microbes there were likely primed to grow there," says microbiologist Terry Hazen of the Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley (Calif.) National Laboratory, who was not part of the study. The study results match unpublished microbe measures made by his team this fall, Hazen adds.

The study results come a day after a presidential commission investigating the Deepwater Horizon spill found safety concerns with oil industry deep sea drilling, now contemplated everywhere from the Arctic and off the coast of Brazil.
Picture
GREEN HOUSE BLOG: Panel warns Gulf oil spill could happen again Future deep-sea oil spills "will at least partially be met with a microbial fate," based on the findings, says study lead author John Kessler of Texas A&M University, by e-mail. Federal scientists in November estimated that about 13% of the 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf from the 84-day-spill was consumed by microbes.

Along the Gulf of Mexico, oil spill tar balls are still washing ashore. For example, this is happening at Alabama's Fort Morgan beach, where BP crews returned from a holiday break Monday to resume cleanup work.

"I don't want to give the impression that the spill wasn't an ecological disaster. It was," Hazen says, noting concerns about dioxin-related chemicals, still unaccounted for, that were released in the disaster. "But a lot of the dangerous constituents of the oil we can broadly suspect of going away faster than many people first suggested."


Oil-eating bacteria proliferated below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico this summer, helping to break down and clean up an underwater oil plume that stretched miles from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, according to a study released Tuesday by the journal Science.

The study is the latest update in the ongoing debate over what has happened to the bulk of the 4.9 million barrels of oil that spilled from the well, and it suggests that the oil may be disappearing relatively quickly from the deep-sea environment.

Just last week, researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution confirmed that much of the oil from the spill ended up suspended in a deep-sea cloud near the wellhead, rather than floating to the surface of the water. They released the most precise map yet of a 1.2-mile-wide plume of microscopic oil compounds that floated 3,000 feet below the surface of the water.

But the map was based on data taken in June, before the well was capped. It didn't address what has happened to that underwater oil since the leak stopped, and how much now remains in the ocean. Oil-eating microbes are plentiful in the Gulf of Mexico, helping to break down oil from natural seeps. But no one is sure how fast that breakdown is occurring with the unprecedented amount of oil deep underwater in the Gulf, where the cold temperatures -- about 5 degrees Celsius -- could slow down the process.

In Tuesday's study, microbiologist Terry Hazen and his colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory looked at the amounts and types of bacteria in the oil plume at the end of May and beginning of June. They found that a type of oil-eating bacteria adapted to the cold water was twice as plentiful inside the oil plume as outside, and that these bacteria -- a newly-discovered species related to the Oceanospirillales -- made up 90 percent of all the bacteria in the oil plume. The researchers also found DNA and fatty acids in the water that are signs of oil breaking down.

They also found that the bacteria were breaking down the oil without depleting the oxygen level in the water as much as expected. That's an important wrinkle, because last week's study by the Woods Hole researchers found that the oxygen supply in the plume water remained high, avoiding the feared deoxygenated "dead zone" harmful to plants and animals. But the new study suggests that despite the fact that oxygen levels remained high in the water, the bacteria were still hard at work.

"The findings are consistent with each other -- which I think is pretty neat to see," says Richard Camilli, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the lead author of last week's study.

The new evidence of oil-eating bacteria in the plume adds to the ongoing debate over how fast the deep-sea oil is disappearing. The federal government said earlier this month that such deepwater dispersed oil was biodegrading quickly, and that 75 percent of the spilled oil had been accounted for. Some outside researchers, however, have questioned that conclusion, arguing that the oil is biodegrading more slowly than the government scientists assume. Tuesday's study seems to offer some support for the government's findings.

In fact, Hazen says that he and his team have continued their monitoring throughout the summer, and that as of about three weeks ago the oil plume was no longer detectable.

"We've been out there continuously," he says. "Once the oil flow stopped on July 15, within two weeks we saw most of the plume disappear."

Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University, says that the new study is good news.

"It certainly shows that the microbial community can and is responding to this addition of oil to the deep water," he says.

However, he cautions that many questions remain unanswered -- such as what has happened to the methane released into the water along with the oil, what percentage of the total oil released ended up in this deep-sea plume, and the environmental effects of changing the deep-sea microbial community.

Original Articles:
1) http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2011-01-06-gulf-oil-spill-methane-natural-gas-bacteria_N.htm

2)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/08/study-oil-eating-microbes-plentiful-in-gulf-oil-spill.html
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    News Watch

    Mind-opening news articles, editorials, videos & apparel that inspire our readers and help liberate them from the status quo. Stay informed.

    Email address:


    Write For Us

    Guest Writers/Bloggers Wanted
    Reach 1000's of readers daily!
    Picture
    Picture
    You are not a product!

    Space Watch


    Picture

    Top News


    News Watch Categories

    All
    2011
    2012
    2013
    2014
    2015
    2017
    2018
    2019
    2020
    2021
    2022
    2023
    5D
    5G
    Alaska
    Alchemy
    Alcohol
    Alex Jones
    Aliens
    Allison Jornlin
    Alternative
    American Ghost Walks
    Ancient Aliens
    Animals
    Anonymous
    Anthony Fauci
    Anti Gravity
    Apophis
    Apparel
    Apple
    Archaeology
    Architecture
    Artificial Intelligence
    Atlantis
    Beauty Products
    Bermuda Triangle
    Big Tech
    Bio Warfare
    Bio-warfare
    Breaking News
    Business
    California
    Cambridge Analytica
    Cannabis
    Celebrities
    CES
    Chakras
    ChatGPT
    Chemtrails
    China
    Climate
    Comedy
    Community
    Consciousness
    Conspiracy
    Constitution
    Coronavirus
    Cover Ups
    COVID 19
    Daily News
    Damon T. Berry
    Dane Wigington
    Data Privacy
    Deep State
    Died Suddenly
    Disclosure
    Diy
    Dna
    Documentary
    Drkstrong
    Drones
    Dutchsinse
    Earth Changes
    Earthquakes
    Economy
    Egypt
    Election
    Elon Musk
    Emerdata
    Energy
    Engineering
    Environmental
    ESA
    Ets
    Exclusive
    Exopolitics
    Exposed
    Facebook
    Fluoride
    Food & Dining
    Fracking
    Fraud
    Free Energy
    Frequency Levels
    Fusion
    Futuristic News
    Gadgets
    Gematria
    Geoengineering
    Germany
    Global Alert News
    Government
    Gray State
    Great Reset
    Guest Contributors
    Hawaii
    Health
    History
    Home Improvement
    Hot Headlines
    Human Interest
    Human Origins
    Illuminati
    Industry
    Inspiration
    Interesting
    ISV Columbus
    Jesus Christ
    John Rappoport
    John Searl
    Just For Laughs
    Lemuria
    Life
    Life And Health
    Mark Dice
    Market Research
    Mark Zuckerberg
    Mars
    Meta Tech
    Mike Huberty
    Military
    Music
    Mystery
    NASA
    Native American
    Natural Disasters
    Natural News
    Nature
    New Years
    Nullification
    Nursing
    Obama
    Olera Naturkosmetik
    Operation Mockingbird
    Operation Paperclip
    Opinion
    Orwellian
    Paracress
    Paranormal
    PDFs
    Physics
    Planet Earth
    Pole Shift
    Police State
    Preparedness
    Project Redsun
    Propaganda
    Pyramids
    Q
    Quarantine
    Russia
    Sacred Geometry
    Samsung
    Science
    Sex
    Situation Update
    Social Credit
    Solar Activity
    Solar Warden
    Space
    Space Force
    Spiritual
    Spiro 1
    Stonehenge
    Strange Places
    Sun Of God
    Surfing
    SuspiciousObservers
    Sustainable
    Syria
    Technology
    Tesla
    Thebarcaroller
    The Truth
    The Why Files
    Transhumanism
    Trump
    TruthGPT
    Truthstream Media
    Ufo
    Ukraine
    Unexplained
    Urgent News
    Us Economy
    Us News
    Viral Videos
    Volcano
    Water 4.0
    Weather
    Whistleblowers
    World
    World Economic Forum
    World News
    WW3
    Yoga
    Zeitgeist

Picture
HAVE A TIP OR STORY TO TELL?  JOIN TODAY & SHARE YOUR STORY!
If you have a breaking news tip or idea, please email: [email protected]
Apparently Apparel® is a registered trade name and part of the ZOAT International® brands network. © 2007-2023. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy.  All art & news content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. ApparentlyApparel.com is not responsible for content written by contributing artists, authors or news feeds. The information on this site is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice of any kind. ApparentlyApparel.com assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material.
  • News Watch
  • Market Watch
  • Weather Watch
  • Quake Watch
  • Sky Watch
  • Space Watch
  • Resources
    • Links
    • Gaming
    • Meditate
    • Bill of Rights
    • Privacy Policy
  • Free Energy
  • ZOAT
  • Advertise
  • Contribute
  • Upload News