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Water samples taken from within the plume were crystal clear. Is that the effect of Corexit?

• kijin 14y ago
  The plume was located more than a kilometer below the surface. I don't think Corexit sprayed on the surface would reach that far down the water column. "Crystal clear" is more likely to be a result of high dilution. Just like groundwater is not a river of water under the ground (it's actually rock with a bit of water filling the cracks), an oil plume is not a river of oil in the sea.
  • nerdtalker 14y ago
    Remember that in the case of the gulf oil spil, Corexit was used in a way that it wasn't ever specifically engineered for (based on their own datasheets for 9500). Instead, it was directly inserted into the stream just a meter or so above the wellhead, underwater. There are videos of this from the ROV streams, and corroborated by other sources (eg NYT: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/impact-of-gulf-spills-underwater-dispersants-is-examined/ http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/impact-of-gulf-spi... Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Use_of_dispersants_deep_under_water http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Use... ) The result was formation of these subsurface plumes that the author talks about.
• jerf 14y ago
  It is most likely an "effect" of the concentration not being high enough to be visible to the human eye, because if I'm reading the article correctly they're referring to a natural crude oil plume. It turns out there's a lot more going on in the Gulf than the few tiny, tiny little holes poked in it by us.