3 ms·
Serious question: Why instead of dispersant (another chemical contaminant) did we not disperse large quantities of lab-grown oil digesting bacteria?
by soyiuz 11y ago
Serious question: Why instead of dispersant (another chemical contaminant) did we not disperse large quantities of lab-grown oil digesting bacteria?
- hodder 11y agoThe USGC is already home to large quantities of oil digesting bacteria, and that is largely why the ecosystem has recovered to the extent it has.
- kevinchen 11y agoNot a biologist, but I would guess that adding oil-digesting bacteria beyond the carrying capacity is very inefficient. The bacteria would clean up oil for one generation and die. However, increasing the carrying capacity (e.g. by adding nitrogen as suggested in the article) lets the microbes reproduce, possibly exponentially (2^t).