Old News?

Seems to me that this isn't as miraculous as some people might think. Ok so we've found a new species of oil eating bacteria... but it's been known for a long time that many, many species of ocean bacteria act this way.

Most oil spills like this tend to disappear quite quickly, much quicker than we could possibly clear them up ourselves, and bacteria that eats / breaks down the oil has been known to be the cause for a long time. Sorry Greenpeace but these things actually do mostly take care of themselves.

Encouraging these bacteria that aid in the clean up is actually one of the more effective methods for cleaning up oil spills.

Not that we don't need to be careful about these things because it does take time and damage is done while the balance is being restored.

Obviously... "Major Oil Spill expected to sort itself out shortly. Don't worry!" and "Bacteria foils oil spill as usual. Nothing to read here" don't make for good news though :) And you'll never hear the government admit that all of its efforts actually play a very small and ineffective part in putting the situation right.

Well... the bit about this not being news is certainly true (many species of bacteria eat oil and (especially) natural gas, so one more is nothing spectacular), but as to the rest... that's kinda true, kinda not. First off, the bacteria only eat certain components of the oil readily, while the more difficult to digest components sit around for a long time until something gets desperate enough to eat them. Second, oil on the surface is eaten much faster than oil that's floating deep under the water at ~4 degrees C. So surface oil disappears quite quickly, while underwater oil can take quite a while. Thirdly, those bacteria only live in the water for the most part. Once the oil hits the shores, it can sit for very, very, very long periods of time (10's of thousands of years in the worst conditions, decades in good conditions).