What is driving me crazy is these reports of plumes and columns of oil mysteriously lurking underwater and traveling throughout the gulf. Oil is lighter than water and will rise to the surface.
On other spills I have read where about 50% of it evaporates! With regard to oil always floating - I found this in researching the Ixtoc 1 spill - 3 million BARRELS of oil in the Gulf in 1979. The dispersents seem to cause it to sink. (Hmmmm - one would think that would have made and still be in the headlines - 30th anniversary of type stuff.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/01/gulf-oil-spill-ixtoc-ecological-tipping-point
EXCERPT:
Champotón was one of the first and worst-hit areas reached by the estimated 3m barrels of oil that poured into the sea over the next nine and a half months. The Ixtoc disaster is still by far the largest peacetime spill....
“They tried to put a funnel on top of it, injected mud and saltwater and cement, but everything they tried to put in the well was forced out by the pressure,” says Abundio Juarez. He was one of the top engineers in the state-owned company, Pemex, that was exploring the Ixtoc deposit at the time, although he was not directly involved in the control effort.....
Pemex also used booms and skimmers, and dumped chemical dispersants on the slicks. That, the scientists say today, helped reduce the amounts reaching the shore but sent encapsulated oil down to the sea bed with some initially devastating effects, particularly for shrimp larvae.”
The article goes on about how they were amazed at the LACK of devastation a year or two after the spill. Said different oils were different, etc.