FleetWatch - 48-slick microbes

The cost of man’s mobility. Scientists say oil eating microbes are the only solution to the long term recovery of the Gulf of Mexico which has been devastated by one of the worst oil spills in history.

Billions of tiny hydrocarbon-chewing microbes may ultimately clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A report by David Biello in Scientific American says the microbes are possibly the last and only real defence against the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Biello reports that a primary motive for using chemical dispersants on the oil slick both above and below the surface of the sea is to break the oil into smaller droplets that bacteria can more easily consume.

Microbial ecologist Kenneth Lee, director of the Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, says if the oil is in small droplets, microbial degradation is much quicker. The dispersants can also stimulate microbial growth. A further benefit is that bacteria will chew on the dispersants as well as the oil.

“In the long run, it’s biodegradation that removes most of the oil from the environment in these situations,” Lee says. “They’re clever, they’re tough and they can basically eat nails. The microbes have to save us again.”

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