Scientists: Large oil plumes detected in Gulf may pose new threat

[sabra]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- While efforts to mop oil off the surface of the Gulf of Mexico stretch into a fifth week, more potentially hazardous oil could be lurking below the surface in large oil plumes, scientists said Monday -- a previously unseen phenomenon they are eager to learn more about.

"Nothing like it has really ever been seen in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico before," Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, told CNN's "American Morning." "It's not only a large feature, but it's a very complex feature. There's a lot of vertical structure to it."

The plumes could mean that even more oil has gushed into the Gulf from an undersea well than previously thought, and the contaminants under the surface could pose additional environmental hazards.

At least one of the plumes is thought to be enormous. Vernon Asper, a professor of marine science at the University of Southern Mississippi, told National Public Radio in a story that aired Monday that the largest is "probably 15 or 20 miles long and maybe 4 or 5 miles wide."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/17/oil.spill.plumes/index.html?hpt=T1

[damntexdem]

1. MAY pose threat? What, is it too oily to say for sure?

Remember those 1950s monster films, where the monster comes up out of the sea and wipes out a city?

Here it is for real, and it's not just one city.

[thereismore]

2. A hurricane could aerosolize the oil and dump it on land. Only fair, said the fish. nt

[Canuckistanian]

3. What's keeping all this oil underwater?

Is it these dispersants? Or is it just complex, powerful currents keeping the oil in one area?

[izquierdista]

4. Non-equilibrium

While a bottle of oil and vinegar salad dressing will separate in half an hour or so, the scale of the ocean is much larger, and it also has temperature and salinity gradients, not to mention convection and currents. Bottom line, it may take a long, long, long time for it to all float to the top.

[Canuckistanian]

5. I suspected that

Thanks for the explanation.