Still There

Remember the BIG story last spring and summer? Ya know, the one the mainstream media covered 24/7 for weeks upon weeks? After they f-i-n-a-l-l-y succeeded in capping the well, the BP-caused oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico faded from public view. Now, for those who aren't living the nightmare, it is gone and forgotten.

You may not see mention of it very often, but while the cameras and microphones have moved on, the oil hasn't. It's still there!!

More and more scientific research teams are uncovering the gruesome details. Recently, one group took a mini-sub to view the seabed floor.

To start our trip to the seafloor, three of us scrunched into the titanium hull of a submarine named Alvin, on the rear deck of the research vessel Atlantis, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The descent through half a mile of inky black water was gentle, almost meditative. And when the sub's lights finally illuminated the bottom, the scene was serene — fish and shrimp paddled around near the seafloor, going about their business, and crabs scuttled along the bottom.

There was no black goo on the bottom, about 10 miles from the Macondo well. But biologist Samantha Joye from the University of Georgia says she wasn't expecting anything quite so blatant.

Instead, we saw a brown haze covering the seafloor, and Joye started noticing things that weren't quite right.

A once-magnificent fan coral was covered with brown fuzz — dead...

While the evidence appears to be piling up that, despite the government's statements to the contrary, the oil didn't vanish due to use of dispersants, government officials say they still aren't convinced. Maybe not, but Ian MacDonald from Florida State University is.

There are still government officials and scientists who want more proof before they are willing to say a lot of BP oil ended up at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and MacDonald certainly respects that skepticism. After all, skepticism is a healthy element of science.

"At the same time, the evidence piles up, and after a while you say, 'Gee, there is oil on the bottom,' " MacDonald says. "And, as a simple statement at the end of this cruise, I have to say, 'Gee, there is oil on the bottom,' and that's too bad.' "