Oil-eating bacteria in the Gulf.

[johnaries]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18971-bacteria-help-to-clean-up-deepwater-horizon-spill.html

The good news:

At the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego, California, this week, Jay Grimes of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg reported that over the past few years, researchers have found that dozens of different kinds of marine bacteria have a healthy appetite for oil.

He said that water samples from the Gulf of Mexico are showing signs that marine bacteria are already pitching in to help with clean-up efforts, and that populations of these bacteria in this area are likely to boom as they feast on the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

And now the bad news:

Among these are members of the Vibrio family, which includes the species that causes cholera. Grimes cautions that there is no evidence that this species is one of those that breaks down oil, although other Vibrios that cause human infections do.

"The Vibrios use breakdown products of oil," says Rita Colwell of the University of Maryland in College Park. "When reaches the estuary, Vibrios very likely will increase."

A very interesting article.

[MBS]

1. thanks for this. Very interesting indeed n/t

[happy_liberal]

2. Bring it on!

:applause:

[flamingdem]

3. Do NOT under any circumstances eat Oysters for the foreseeable future nt

[marions ghost]

4. you dont want

vibrio in your oysters...:puke: makes people very sick

while the bacteria has some pluses in this, it can also cause anaerobic dead zones because the bacteria use so much O2.

Not sure how effective in this spill but I'm sure they'll be using everything possible...a big experiment...

[johnaries]

6. The article mentions using fertillizer to help increase the

bacteria (isn't there already enough fertilizer run-off from the Mississippi?), but considering the other dangers of the bacteria I'm not sure how good an idea that is.

Sure, eventually the bacteria will die back eventually, but considering the extent of the oil leak who knows how long that will be?

[marions ghost]

9. It's never simple when you introduce sudden changes

"Nature has already evolved microbes better at consuming hydrocarbons than anything we could grow, and when you go out in the ocean and dump some new organisms on a spill, it already is colonized with those better, natural microbes," says microbiologist Ronald Atlas in an interview with USA Today. "What we are really doing is adding fertilizers to these locations to speed the natural process." Experts estimate that, when fertilized, the oil-digesting microbes can work three to five times more quickly, yielding measurable results in a year or so.

Sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, introducing nitrate-based nutrients into the ocean disrupts the ecological balance and can cause other problems down the road.

"The concentration of chemicals used to clean up sites contaminated by oil spills can cause environmental nightmares of their own," says Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist in Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division, in a Science Daily report.

According to Hazen, who has studied the long-term effects of the Amoco Cadiz spill of 1978 and the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989, untreated areas of coastline recover naturally within a few years, but chemically treated areas sustain more long-term damage.

[mod mom]

5. My daughter (6th grader) just finished this book "Uglies" in which a former oil dependent society

perished because were too dependent on oil. One day, a bacteria was created that changed the nature of oil and made it wildly unstable. As this "oil-bug" spread, everyone's car exploded, as did the oil fields we were all fighting over. Food didn't get delivered to cities, planes stopped flying, and transportation in general broke down. Relatively few of people survived. the book takes place several hundred years in the future where a society exists that is very highly controlled.

Wow this is kind of eerie considering these assholes were willing to try something (drilling in deep water) that they knew they were unable to control.

:scared:

[marions ghost]

8. I guess you can say that

children reading books like that helps them understand how everything is related, and maybe it lessens the shock when bad stuff happens in the environment and society. You can't shield children from this. yep we should be :scared:

[profile this]

10. The Uglies

My daughter is a huge fan of the series. If she liked the uglies have her read the other books in the series. The Pretties, The Extras.

[mod mom]

11. "Pretties" is next on her list after she finishes all her end of year projects.

She read this book as part of a Battle of the Books competition, which her team won out of 16 teams. I read this as well as one of the parent advisors and when I read the first sentence "The sky was the color of cat vomit" I thought it was going to be awful, but as I read on it was very good. The list of book selections dealt with many social conscious issues. It was a very positive experience for both of us.

[profile this]

15. My daughter

first read the books in 6th grade. She is now in 9th grade, and every year she re-reads the whole trilogy +1. When she first heard of the oil-spill, the first thing that came out of her mouth was, "that's what happened in the uglies, it's happening". We are planning a trip this summer to the gulf so she can see the damage all this oil is doing to our environment.

[alittlelark]

14. That is a great book!

The whole trilogy +1 (Extras) was first rate.

[TampaAnimus2010]

7. They should be seeding the good bacteria on the beaches then...

Give them a head start over the bad ones. If the ecosystem is full of good oil eating bacteria, the bad ones will have a harder time replicating.

[mod mom]

12. Do you really think (looking at how the drilling took place to begin with) we should be delving into

more untested waters?

[Name removed]

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