surface. it is distributing. in spring time this critical time of year when fish and other organisms are breeding and laying eggs into the water and it s floating through it s deadly toxic. what we re seeing here, even though it s not the big thick oil, this is still a big, big problem. there she is now, amber lion. you spoke with doug suttles. he said bacteria should eat up all the chemicals. now that you ve seen the oil, probably like most people have not seen it, what do you think of his take on the dispersants? well, don, let me tell what you i saw. before entering the water, there was a foamy layer of dispersed oil you had to go through. it was disgusting. thank goodnee were wearing the suits. in addition to that, when you descended down into the water column, there was about a 15-foot layer of tiny oil droplets that had been disperse
biosurfactants to combat the oil spill. but they re not fast enough. we need to produce them, surround the oil droplets and encourage the microbes to grow around the the biosurfactants, you say it doesn t work fast enough on its own. we can accelerate the process greatly. that kind of data, control experiment versus actually putting in the dispersants in a real situation doesn t exist. we don t have the data. but the key is, instead of using these dangerous chemicals that, in fact, kill marine microbes, what we re doing is putting biosurfact also ants in that we
reporter: well, the scientists who have discovered this are still debating what this means and how big this is. it s not a big, thick blob of oil. it s very thin. it s a mixture of oil droplets and water not diminishing it in any way but properly trying to describe it. their biggest concern is that it s there, they have noticed some oxygen depletion around the edges of the oil and their concern is it could lead to more oxygen depletion which could affect our marine life deep under the ocean. you re talking 2,000 to 4,000 feet below this surface and so this is just another indication of how widespread this oil is. they ve described it almost like a salad dressing consistency. it s not the really thick blob but it s down there and scientists are quite worried about it. it s not killing marine yet life that they know of but it could because of the oxygen depletion, alex. okay. mark potter, thank you for that sobering update. officials in florida are investigating the cause of a