Tallahassee, Florida – Scientists are sitting on the edge of their seats, and they have their fingers crossed that the natural oil-eating bacteria being used off the Gulf of Mexico’s Coast have voracious appetites.

One scientist from the Florida State University, Markus Huettel, is studying the natural oil-eating bacteria, trying to determine just how long it will take them to eat up the oil which has penetrated deep into the sediment.

Huettel is a biological oceanographer, and has collected many samples from the beaches in and around the Pensacola area, and is rather astonished by the findings. It appears that oil has penetrated as deep as eight inches into the sand.

The oil is quite an eyesore, and sticks out like a sore thumb on the normally pristine white sandy beaches of the Florida Panhandle.
What is not known at this time, and what Huettel is devoting his time to, is just exactly how long the oil will remain there. He explained that these natural oil-eating bacteria rely upon the proper mixture of oxygen and nutrients to eat up the oil. What is unclear is if the mixture is right deep in the sand.

Under appropriate conditions, Huettel has said that the oil-eating bacteria should be able to complete the task of cleaning up the oil from the BP spill in a relatively short timeframe. “We are talking days, weeks, sometimes a month, you see a substantial degradation of this oil. The situation changes dramatically if you isolate the oil from oxygen and nutrients and that can happen deep in the sediment.”