"Many people speculated that subsurface oil droplets were being easily degraded," said Richard Camilli, the lead author of the paper. "Well we didn't find that. We found it was still there."
At the heart of the debate is the rate at which naturally occurring microbes have consumed the oil from the runaway well. Even by the White House estimates, about one quarter of the oil was siphoned away from the well, skimmed off the surface, or burned. But the White House, in a high-profile briefing, earlier this month suggested that microbes had eaten as much as 50% of the remaining oil.
The study reinforces earlier reports from research voyages led by scientists from the University of Georgia and Texas A&M University who detected the presence of deepwater plumes of oil.
But the authors argued that theirs was more authoritative as it is the first to be published in a major peer-reviewed journal since oil began pumping into the ocean from the broken well four months ago. The authors also noted their access to superior technology including one of the few underwater robots available outside the oil industry.
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