22 Mile Oil Plume Threatens to Poison Food Chain for Sea Life

Posted in Deepwater Horizon,Environment,Florida Maritime News,Gulf Coast,Louisiana Maritime News on May 28, 2010

NEW ORLEANS, La — Researchers have discovered that a 22 mile oil plume was nearing an underwater canyon, where it threatens to poison the food chain for sea life in the waters off Florida. The cloud was nearing a large underwater canyon whose currents fuel the food chain in the Gulf waters off Florida and could potentially wash the tiny plants and animals that feed larger organisms in a stew of toxic chemicals, another researcher said Friday.

The first such plume detected by scientists stretched from the well southwest toward the open sea, but this new undersea oil cloud is headed miles inland into shallower waters where many fish and other species reproduce.

Larry McKinney, executive director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, said the DeSoto Canyon off the Florida Panhandle sends nutrient-rich water from the deep sea up to shallower waters.

McKinney said that in a best-case scenario, oil riding the current out of the canyon would rise close enough to the surface to be broken down by sunlight. But if the plume remains relatively intact, it could sweep down the west coast of Florida as a toxic soup as far as the Keys, through what he called some of the most productive parts of the Gulf.

Read original story by MATTHEW BROWN and JASON DEAREN / Huffington Post