So I was called an idiot (again).

This time it is due to my shoddy writing (a quip really) about the new oil eating bacteria.

I do not think that I wrote enough to clarify what is going - mea culpa.

Thanks Reddit, you have spurred me again to write this blog (at least this short article).

So, to wit:

While the oil eating bacteria seem to be a relatively old man made creation (wiki on Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty), the abundance of these critters occurring naturally in the Gulf has surprised the scientists.

Tampa Bay Online, dated September 16, 2010,

A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe is suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

And the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers led by Terry Hazen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., reported Tuesday in the online journal Sciencexpress.

"Our findings, which provide the first data ever on microbial activity from a deepwater dispersed oil plume, suggest" a great potential for bacteria to help dispose of oil plumes in the deep-sea, Hazen said in a statement.

A newly discovered species of naturally occurring (voracious) oil eating bacteria, which for some reason did not exist during the Exxon Valdez spill in the Earth's oceans.

But it magically appeared, ready to eat the oil and help the cause, just days after the BP oil spill.

As a bonus, consider this prescient quip from another article.
Examiner.com, dated September 8th, 2010,

Scientists have released a report showing that microbes are slowly eating the oil from the BHP oil spill. The use of 771,000 gallons of chemical dispersant is having the intended effect of keeping the oil suspended in deep water where it is slowly being eaten by naturally occurring microbes.

Scientists have been worried that the large increase in microbes, who view the oil as food, might consume all of the dissolved oxygen to create dead zones (hypoxic conditions) in the ocean. What they found is that the levels of oxygen in the water column containing the oil were lower by about 20%, but that this level was not a danger to marine life.

Right, no danger of creating dead zones due to the "naturally" occuring microbes.

Disregard the article and the pictures from just below...