Oil Spill Cleanup

[taxidermist]

http://ir.stockpr.com/ecospheretech/video-presentations/view/53/total-frac-water-management-lifecycle

These systems are used everyday in Arkansas (130 well sites.) and they say they are ready to move on the gulf oil.

Also used in Texas, Oklahoma.

[Kayser]

Ok, so I saw this in one of my classes, and finally found it online. The actual story starts at 2:10 or somewhere in there. So, microbes have been used on oil spills in the US before. Also shows the use on coastal marshes, not just open ocean. Not saying this is the miracle solution, but I think it's like a pretty good idea.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdjxsw_oil-eating-microbes-the-quickest-so_news

Rob

[gotmuddy]

Ok, so I saw this in one of my classes, and finally found it online. The actual story starts at 2:10 or somewhere in there. So, microbes have been used on oil spills in the US before. Also shows the use on coastal marshes, not just open ocean. Not saying this is the miracle solution, but I think it's like a pretty good idea.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdjxsw_oil-eating-microbes-the-quickest-so_news

Rob

When the rig blew up and news of the spill starting airing on tv my wife and I were talking about it and I told her not to worry, because I remembered that in the past in TX they had used microbes developed by Texas A&M to "eat" the oil. Then a month goes by and I hear absolutely nothing about it. Fishy if you ask me.

[Outside Bend]

Not really fishy.

Every now and again oil bubbles up from the ocean floor, and through time some organisms have evolved to exploit that food base. There's already oil-eating microbes present in the Gulf, and they're already naturally consuming the oil (some of the weathered and degraded oil you've heard talk of).

Just like us, those critters need oxygen. I think the fear with adding more to the mix is that they would de-oxygenate the waters of the gulf, so instead of a big dead zone due to oil, you'd have a big dead zone due to oil and oil-eating, oxygen-consuming microbes. In either instance the area wouldn't be be very hospitable to most marine life, so it's really a no-win situation.

[Kayser]

The main difference is that the "dead zone" would be temporary, as algae could re-oxygenate the water with the waste from the oil-eaters (hydrocarbons and CO2, the main food for algae). Also, I'm not entirely sure that the microbes use respiration- they could be entirely photochemosynthetic, and not relying on 02 to degrade the oil, just the oil and sunlight, or even just oil. Not everything needs oxygen to live, as a matter of fact most microbe species don't need it, or it may even be toxic to them.

If the oil remains, then the water would remain toxic for years to come, and even if the wildlife recovers, we still won't be able to eat the seafood, and the recovery will be a lot slower due to the toxicity. Recruitment and survival rates of wildlife are still much lower than they should be in the Prince William Sound due to toxicity caused by lingering oil that was never cleaned up. This goes for everything from killer whales and otters (higher predators) all the way down to krill.

Rob

[Outside Bend]

And a bloom of algae subsisting off the oil-eater's waste would eventually die, their decomposition would use up oxygen, and you'd set up the potential for a recurring dead-zone.

The Prince William Sound is a different system than the Gulf. Different species, with different energetic requirements. Different water temperatures. Exxon was all oil, this is a mixture of oil and gas. I don't have all the answers (or even most of them), and I'm not sure how severe the impacts of this oil spill will be on the Gulf ecosystem. I do know that sometimes our solutions are just as bad as the problem.