The Georgia Sea Grant and the University of Georgia have released a report which draws the conclusion that somewhere in the vicinity of 80% of the oil which was released into the Gulf Of Mexico from the BP spill has not been cleaned up, and is still a threat to the environment.

The report was written by five accomplished marine researchers, and strongly goes against the reports issued by the media, which state that only 25% of the oil from the BP spill is still out there.

“One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless,” director of Georgia Sea Grant and professor of marine sciences in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Charles Hopkinson explains. “The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade. We are still far from a complete understanding of what its impacts are.”

The report was written in conjunction with Jay Brandes, the associate professor of the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography; Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the UGA; Richard Lee, professor emeritus at Skidaway; and Ming-yi Sun, a professor of marine sciences at the UGA.

This group of researchers have take a look at the data taken from the Aug 2nd National Incident Command Report, which estimated an “oil budget” which was widely interpreted as suggesting hat only 25% of the oil from the catastrophic spill remained in the waters.