Oil from 2010 BP spill found at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico
A new study suggests that up to 38 million liters of crude oil from the 2010 BP oil spill is resting on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico, posing a threat to the local ecosystem.
The findings have shed light on where ‘missing’ oil from the spill ended up — a quandary that puzzled U.S. government and BP officials during massive cleanup efforts in April, 2010.
Of the nearly 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the ocean, around 2 million remained unaccounted for, years after the disaster.
Florida researchers took 62 sediment samples from a 24,000 square kilometre space around the site of the BP oil spill and discovered that about 8,400 square km are covered with oil from spill.
“This is going to affect the Gulf for years to come,” Jeff Chanton, the study’s lead researcher and a professor of chemical oceanography at Florida State University, said in a statement.
“Fish will likely ingest contaminants because worms ingest the sediment, and fish eat the worms. It’s a conduit for contamination into the food web.”
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