Scientists Fear Oil Is Settling on Bottom of Gulf

By Jeffrey Ball

The federal government is concerned that oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill may be settling on the ocean floor, causing environmental damage where it's hardest to see.

Scientists who finished a government-sponsored research expedition Thursday reported finding a small area of dead and dying corals covered with an unknown brown material on the bottom of the Gulf, about seven miles from where a BP PLC well gushed millions of barrels of oil into the water this year.

The environmental damage likely resulted from the BP spill, said Charles Fisher, a biologist at Penn State University and the chief scientist on the trip, in a statement Friday.

"The circumstantial evidence is extremely strong and compelling, because we have never seen anything like this," said Mr. Fisher, who, with other scientists, worked on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship.

NOAA and other federal officials said the researchers did not find such damage at most sites they studied.

Earlier this year, another group of researchers reported finding what they said appeared to be oil in sediment along the Gulf floor at various spots as far as 40 miles from the BP well.

It's not yet clear whether the researchers have found oil, or if they did, whether that oil is from the BP well, rather than from a natural oil seep, for example.

"The real issue is, can we make the causal link?" said Steve Murawski, chief science adviser for NOAA's fisheries unit and one of the officials working to assess the spill's environmental damage. "I'm really interested to see what the brown stuff is."

NOAA is coordinating studies that collectively have taken samples of sediment at more than 450 spots on the Gulf floor, some as far as 180 miles from the well. But tests analyzing the content of the samples won't be back for weeks or months, he said.

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