Scientist: Oil-eating bacteria feasted

OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. - Oil-eating bacteria in the Gulf of Mexico devoured crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead last year, researcher Terry Hazen said during the University of Southern Mississippi’s distinguished lecture series Wednesday. Hazen, co-director of the Virtual Institute for Microbial Stress and Survival at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a team of 50 scientists studied the spill from May 25 to Oct. 20, 2010 and found that that 45 percent of the light crude evaporated in a week, then bacteria acted like "oil-seeking missiles" and feasted on the oil. The bacteria had adapted to eating oil over millions of years from seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. "This does not give the oil companies a free pass," Hazen said. "Do not think that. It was devastating. There was a lot of oil out there for 84 days. Plankton and fish, all sorts of things, were swimming through that stuff. It is going to take long-term studies to figure out exactly how that affected them." (Source: Mississippi Press, 07/28/11)