From the University of Rochester , those darned bacteria are ruining the eco photo-ops. Video follows.
At least 200,000 tons of oil and gas from Deepwater Horizon spill consumed by gulf bacteria
Researchers from the University of Rochester and Texas A&M University have found that, over a period of five months following the disastrous 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, naturally-occurring bacteria that exist in the Gulf of Mexico consumed and within five months removed at least 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas that spewed into the deep Gulf from the ruptured well head.
The researchers analyzed an extensive data set to determine not only how much oil and gas was eaten by bacteria, but also how the characteristics of this feast changed with time.
“A significant amount of the oil and gas that was released was retained within the ocean water more than one-half mile below the sea surface. It appears that the hydrocarbon-eating bacteria did a good job of removing the majority of the material that was retained in these layers,” said co-author John Kessler <http://www.ees.rochester.edu/people/faculty/kessler_john/index.html> of the University of Rochester.
The results published this week in Environmental Science and Technology http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es301363k include the first measurements of how the rate at which the bacteria ate the oil and gas changed as this disaster progressed, information that is fundamental to understanding both this spill and predicting the behavior of future spills.
Kessler noted: “Interestingly, the oil and gas consumption rate was correlated with the addition of dispersants at the wellhead. While there is still much to learn about the appropriateness of using dispersants in a natural ecosystem, our results suggest it made the released hydrocarbons more available to the native Gulf of Mexico microorganisms. ”
Their measurements show that the consumption of the oil and gas by bacteria in the deep Gulf had stopped by September 2010, five months after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. “It is unclear if this indicates that this great feast was over by this time or if the microorganisms were simply taking a break before they start on dessert and coffee” said Kessler. “Our results suggest that some (about 40%) of the released hydrocarbons that once populated these layers still remained in the Gulf post September 2010, so food was available for the feast to continue at some later time. But the location of those substances and whether they were biochemically transformed is unknown.”
Previous studies of the Deepwater Horizon spill had shown that the oil and gas were trapped in underwater layers, or “plumes”, and that the bacteria had begun consuming the oil and gas. By using a more extensive data set, the researchers were able to measure just how many tons of hydrocarbons released from the spill had been removed in the deep Gulf waters. The team’s research suggests that the majority of what once composed these large underwater plumes of oil and gas was eaten by the bacteria.
Professor John Kessler, recently appointed as Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the University of Rochester, worked with graduate research assistant Mengran Du at Texas A&M University to analyze over 1300 profiles of oxygen dissolved in the Gulf of Mexico water spanning a period of four months and covering nearly 30,000 square miles.
The researchers calculated how many tons of oil and gas had been consumed and at what rate by first measuring how much oxygen had been removed from the ocean. Mengran Du explained that “when bacteria consume oil and gas, they use up oxygen and release carbon dioxide, just as humans do when we breathe. When bacteria die and decompose, that uses up still more oxygen. Both these processes remove oxygen from the water.” Du added that it is this lower oxygen level that the researchers could measure and use as an indicator of how much oil and gas had been removed by microorganisms and at what rate.
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation with additional contributions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Sloan Foundation, BP/the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, and the Chinese Scholarship Council.
Good deal. Glad that nature is taking things into its own hands.
I am curious about the headline though. What’s with the sarcasm? “inconvenient”? There is no opposing side brought up in the post and no argument that said opposing side is being proved wrong. The sarcasm of the headline is completely unfitting of the contents of the body of the post. Its just a “take that environmentalists” headline with no substance to why and what they should be taking. I am pretty sure that just about everyone doesn’t want huge oil spills and that just about everyone is happy when they were mitigated by natural processes.
What I mean is that it is sometimes OK to just post some good informative news without sarcastic knife twisting – no?
Bloke down the pub says:
September 12, 2012 at 3:59 am
Perhaps to borrow one of the techniques he used, all wind turbines should have a web cam pointed at them so everyone can see how often they’re turning.
http://www.webcamvue.com/webcam_categories.asp?category_name=Windmill_/_Wind_Farm&category_id=100
That is good to hear and expected. The cold water in Alaska doesn’t lend itself to quick digestion so they still have (and will have) oily spots long after the gulf will be back to normal.
Here is something else inconvenient.
California oil seeps
http://oils.gpa.unep.org/facts/natural-sources.htm
Yes, this is an important observation.
It points to a basic approach to oil spills:
1.) Large powerful mechanical oil skimmers (The use of the largest oil skimmer in the world was declined for a time during the Deep Water Horizon disaster inexplicably even though it was offered immediately after the oil spill). So, having large oil skimmers available is important.
2,) Develop hydrocarbon eating bacteria which can be dispersed at the oil spill site and surrounding area, which will eat the hydrocarbons.
With aggressive use of the above strategies, the use of Corexit can be minimized or not used at all because there is evidence Corexit is toxic.
Of course, all of this remediation of oil spills is no substitute for the safety protocol to insure oil spills don’t happen in the first place. Remember, the Deep Water Horizon was the first major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in over 40 years of offshore oil drilling in the Gulf.
Robert of Ottawa says:
“Well, now we know how to clan up oil spills anywhere, right?”
Not quite. The persistence of the oil in the sediments of Prince William Sound (from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill) shows that organisms that eat oil are not abundant there. They may not be well suited for cold climates.
gator69 says:
“… petroleum is organic in nature, and just mother’s milk to some.”
Several years ago, a surveyor friend of mine was hired to survey a diesel spill in marshes along the St. John’s River near Jacksonville, Fl. The survey was then used to assess monetary damages against the barge company responsible. During the initial survey, RTK GPS was used to delineate the boundaries of the spill. Several day later, the affected area was clearly visible as the marsh grass began to die. The following year, he went back to re-survey the same area. He found that the spill area was still easily discernible, but this time it was characterized by healthy, bright green grass that was about 6″ taller than the surrounding marsh. He said it looked like the diesel fuel had fertilized the marsh.
“Dose makes the poison” – Paracelsus
Don K,
The article is not at all about the cold. The oil is in the sand. There are two reasons, the spill was on the surface and still waters of the sound.
The bacteria involved with DWH actually work best in the cold. How cold and what pressures, I don’t know.
The arctic must have its own bacteria or there’d be pools of oil under the ice.
Rough Seas ,natural waves ,storms and currents break up most oil spils.Natural bacteria in the ocean break down and eats up the Oil.
Exonn Valdez was so bad because it s an inland waterway .No waves and Ocean to break down the Oil.
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=2568
“The bacteria we saw in the deep-water samples in May and June were related to types of psychrophilic, or cold-loving bacteria. Most bacteria grow more slowly at cooler temperatures –– that’s why we keep our food in the refrigerator. But psychrophilic bacteria actually grow faster at cold temperatures than they would at room temperature.”
I also want to take a second to agree with Charlie Z. Sometimes I want to share links to WUWT content, but the tone makes it so I can’t.
aaron says:
September 12, 2012 at 11:56 am
I also want to take a second to agree with Charlie Z. Sometimes I want to share links to WUWT content, but the tone makes it so I can’t.
___________________
aaron and Charlie Z,
This is a “told you so” thread.
Where were you when the Deepwater Horizon tragedy unfolded?
There was a constant barrage of propaganda, propelled by very ugly words issuing from every pore of the ecoloonysphere, from the White House, on down.
Anyone daring to post the idea that nature would resolve the issue over time, opened themselves up to hateful diatribes and for those involved, punitive measures from officialdom.
Most of the people posting here know that they are the subject of daily, intense vilification by the adherents of the ideas of CAGW. We are continuously bombarded by inanities passing as wisdom or scientific truth.
Have you ever tried posting a contrary thought on one of the catastrophe- promoting blogs like Real Climate, or Climate Realist?
What do you think of their tone?
How do you think that ideas which are logically, scientifically and emphatically unsound have been allowed to flourish over there, for years?
Like you, I’m all for civility in most matters.
While Pollyanna- ish attitudes might feel good, the only path an honest man can take is to deal with the world as it is.
Are we having too much fun (again) at the expense of the doomsayers?
Not sure if it’s too much, but it sure is fun.
OK, sure, micro-organisms eat the oil, and the traces of stuff mixed in with it, and turn it into ???
And what was that bit about it stopping after 5 months? Did the water get too cold? Was there not enough sun-light? Did the micro-organisms get belly-aches and take naps like lions? Where’s the rest of the story?
Mr. Hoofstader,
The Enviros psuedo-scientists testified to the Congress, that the Prince William Sound had “not returned to normal” three years after the spill.
It was “not normal” because there was “too much” life there. The Oil spill fed and fertilized a lot of bacteria who where than consumed up the food chain, multiplying the life at each level.
Their fundamental premise that the environment is FRAGILE. There is no evidence that it is indeed the case except for very brief periods.
The enviros can talk of a a couple of tanker spills and Amoco Cadiz and the Prince William sound Exxon Valdiz tanker, but completely overlook that more than 5000 tankers were torpedoed and sunk during WW II, to no apparent permanent damage to the Oceans.
That’s interesting, oil spill dispersants are my field of work.
Dispersed oil is more available to all organisms in the spillage area, this is known from a long time. The consequences are higher acute toxicity but faster degradation of the oil, and what is the final balance between the two effects changes from case to case.
All dispersants have some amount of toxicity, even the greenest ones. Corexit is probably the most well-known of all and at least to me it does not seem particularly malignant. The fact is, dispersed oil is sensibly more toxic than dispersants to marine life. For response workers, some types of Corexit (there isn’t only one) may be more toxic due to the glycol ether solvent.
A bit of history: injection of dispersants at the wellhead or plume origin for underwater oil spills was initially proposed in the early 90’s but as far as I know used in practice only for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and as we can see here its effects still have to be understood in full.
Bioremediation also works – not as a first response measure, of course. For that, mechanical recovery (skimming) is the best option.
Rather than adding oil-degrading bacteria, which most often are not well adapted to local conditions, it is better to use specialty nutrients that can provide nitrogen and phosphrous to the indigenous micro-organisms. There are some interesting success stories for this technique.
I wouldn’t really say that oil spillages are beneficial for the environment or no big deal.
But they are often not the lifelong catastrophe they are portrayed to be. A big problem is that many factors affect the outcome: location of the spill; nature of the spilled product; magnitude and type of the response/cleanup efforts. It’s not easy to make predictions.
href=”http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/11/inconvenient-bacteria-eats-a-good-portion-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill/#comment-1076857″ Stas Peterson:
“The enviros can talk of a a couple of tanker spills and Amoco Cadiz and the Prince William sound Exxon Valdiz tanker, but completely overlook that more than 5000 tankers were torpedoed and sunk during WW II, to no apparent permanent damage to the Oceans.”
I think that if you’re a fisherman seeing your fish dead or tainted by the spilled oil it won’t be of much confort to know that the oil will be gone in a few years. Your immediate concern is how to make a living in the next few months.
This is not to start a diatribe, mind you.
Gee, it certainly appears that there are total idiots that believe spills of this magnitude are good for the environment.
Holy crap!
When bacteria decompose? There is no non-bio process of decomposition. They must have been et by other bacteria. It’s bacteria all the way down.
The really interesting question is whether these bacteria exist elsewhere and if not whether they could be bred to live in the temperatures elsewhere.