Microbes consumed oil in Gulf slick at unexpected rates, study finds
Monday, August 1, 2011 - 11:32
in Biology & Nature
In the first published study to explain the role of microbes in breaking down the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, researchers have found that bacterial microbes inside the slick degraded the oil at a rate five times faster than microbes outside the slick -- accounting in large part for the disappearance of the slick some three weeks after Deepwater Horizon's Macondo well was shut off.