Playing Hide and Seek With Oil

A new report authored by five prominent marine scientists provides a powerful contradiction of the government's recent report that only 25 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster remains in the Gulf of Mexico. On August 4, the government issued a news release that stated, "The vast majority of the oil from the BP oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed using chemicals -- much of which is in the process of being degraded." The group of scientists who authored the contradictory report estimate that 70 to 79 percent of the oil that gushed into the gulf still remains. Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia and a co-author of the report, points out that the huge amount of methane that also gushed into the gulf has been completely ignored. Charles Hopkinson, professor of marine sciences in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences says, “One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless ... The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade. We are still far from a complete understanding of what its impacts are.”