Sedimentary

Oil from the BP spill has not been completely cleared, but miles of it is sitting at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a study currently under way.

Professor Samantha Joye of the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, who is conducting a study on a research vessel just two miles from the spill zone, said the oil has not disappeared, but is on the sea floor in a layer of scum.

"We're finding it everywhere that we've looked. The oil is not gone," Joye said. "It's in places where nobody has looked for it."

All 13 of the core samples Joye and her UGA team have collected from the bottom of the gulf are showing oil from the spill, she said. . .

Joye said she spent hours studying the core samples and was unable to find anything other than bacteria and microorganisms living within.

"There is nothing living in these cores other than bacteria," she said. "I've yet to see a living shrimp, a living worm, nothing. . ."

"Nobody should be surprised," Joye said. "When you apply large scale dispersants, it goes to the bottom -- it sediments out. It gets sticky."

A layer of oil two and a half inches thick coating the ocean floor, 16 miles away from the site of BP's wells has been found. Just yesterday, an entirely new, shallower-lying plume of hydrocarbons was found by researchers, miles long and hundreds of yards wide. Nothing is living besides microbes where the oil has settled. But BP and Soetorobama say the crisis is over. Sure.