Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's gone...

[Nomad]

Interesting article on the Gulf Oil Spill that answers the question of where the oil is.

For reasons still unknown, but hinted at in an obscure 2003 study and now made painfully clear, much of that oil doesn’t float. It rises a bit, and hangs there. Hence reports during the disaster of giant, underwater oil plumes, which ultimately received less general attention than shoreline pollution, but was no less real.

In the disaster’s aftermath, with the Obama administration announcing tight restrictions on deep-sea drilling and the oil industry fighting them, the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report declaring that almost three-quarters of oil spilled into the Gulf was already gone (pdf). That conclusion was promptly attacked by oceanographers from the University of Georgia. Based on the same data, they said almost three-quarters of the oil was still there.

 

[Flying Crane]

Even to say that any of the oil is "gone", begs the question: to where does it go? It doesn't just magically disappear. If it's gone, it's because it's mixed into the water and drifted out of that area, or it's settled on the bottom and isn't obvious any more. But that doesn't mean it's really gone.

 

[crushing]

There is the possibility they are looking in the wrong place for the oil.

A Tale of Two Wells
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[Nomad]

Even to say that any of the oil is "gone", begs the question: to where does it go? It doesn't just magically disappear. If it's gone, it's because it's mixed into the water and drifted out of that area, or it's settled on the bottom and isn't obvious any more. But that doesn't mean it's really gone.

"Gone" can mean that it's been biodegraded by bacteria that essentially use it as a feedstock, converting some of the oil into biomass. Of course, this can then lead to massive bacterial blooms, which can be disastrous in their own right, or can lead to some leftover nastiness (eg. unaltered carcinogens) making it's way up the food chain.