An ABC News team has figured one way to test the ongoing “Mission Accomplished” party line: Go search for oil with researchers who know where to look. And ABC reports that “one mile below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, there is little sign of life.”
With University of Georgia professor Samantha Joye serving as guide, the network journeyed aboard the U.S. Navy’s deep-ocean research submarine Alvin. You need somebody who knows their way around, and Professor Joye has taken nearly two dozen dives in the little sub (it’s the one that helped find the Titanic.) And according to Joye, “It looks like everything is dead” down on the sea floor.
An example of why you might need a guide is that the ABC team notes that the ocean floor seems to be covered with twigs, but Ms. Joye points out that they are dead worms that are part of an 80-square mile “kill zone” near the Deepwater Horizon site. She says the dead material is about four inches deep and she also continues to refute the “vast majority of oil gone” spin coming from the White House.
Reports ABC News: “… 5,000 feet down, the oil appears to be everywhere. The government estimates that less than 25 percent of the oil remains, but these scientists say it’s not gone, just settled at the bottom of the ocean.”
The professor has been among those of us asserting that the oil is FAR from gone. And we know that because fishermen, environmentalists and others continue to report oil out on the water and oil coming ashore in one form or another. “We’re finding it everywhere that we’ve looked. The oil is not gone,” Ms. Joye has maintained since September. “It’s in places where nobody has looked for it.”
You have to wonder, if ABC can so quickly find the dead-zone and an ocean floor covered with oil – aboard a U.S. Navy vessel no less – why are the Coast Guard, NOAA and the Obama Administration having so much trouble?
The ABC exclusive is here: http://abcnews.go.com/m/screen?id=12305709
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