Nature is altogether more clever than we are

Earlier this summer, I made a post on the BFP message boards talking about the Gulf oil spill and how bacteria could be deployed to clean up the oil. At the time, I was thinking of oil-eating bacteria that lived in soil being adapted to live in salt water. What I didn’t realize (but probably should have) is that nature had already hit on this little trick and there are already bacteria that live in the deep, cold water and love to eat oil. NPR did a story on them this morning.
There are some encouraging signs from the Gulf of Mexico that bacteria are consuming the underwater oil plume from the broken BP well. The news comes just days after oceanographer Christopher Reddy and a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said they had found a big underwater oil plume in May and June, but no signs of oil-eating bacteria.
At the time, Reddy said microbes are about as predictable as teenagers.  "Microbes are pretty selective in how they eat oil," he explained.  "Sometimes they kick in; sometimes they don't. Sometimes they do the easiest work and they don't do the hard work."

The thing that I'm learning from this project is that there are no shortage of surprises from the microbial point of view.

- Benjamin Van Mooy, scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The hard work is what scientists had been hoping to see — bacteria consuming the more toxic chemicals in the oil plume and rendering them harmless.  Reddy said sooner or later, the bugs should show up.