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
oil. it s a mixture of oil particles and water. but it s a different consistency from the water so it stands out. the concern that scientists have, and they re still studying this, the jury is still out on what all this means, but their concern is that they ve noticed a drop in oxygen quality here the blob, in other words, oxygen depletion. not enough to kill marine life so far, but the concern is that it could lead to that at some point. and to have that much oil down there that deep, 2,000 to 4,000 feet undetected from the surface is a great concern to scientists. but they re still trying to figure out exactly how serious that could be. yeah. well, i m glad you put it in terms of kind of like a jellyfish. i get that. that makes a little more sense. thanks so much, mark potter. well, on the political front, new questions today on this bill. on meet the press this morning, senate minority leader mitch mcconnell said it s not only the big oil companies that have big questions to a
attempt to seal the leak succeeds soon before his business grindz to a halt. and there is a discovery from researchers who say they have found huge plumes of oil thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean. they re still debating the potential effects of that but are worried it could lead to oxygen depletion in the water which could have an effect on marine life. alex? one of them being, what, ten miles long, three miles wide, of course. thank you very much, mark potter. we ll check with you again. new this morning, the new york times says scientists are finding enormous plumes under water and we re getting the details right now. i was telling but the ten miles long, three miles wide, 300 feet thick. this reported discovery suggests that the oil spill could be a lot worse than the government and bp estimates. a woman in texas escaped a dangerous flash flood with her life but couldn t escape the law. police say the woman drove around a barricade onto an interstate that clos
the list of potential liabilities, starting with the oxygen depletion in the gulf of mexico, because of the potential size of this cloud of oilรง do have any quantification of how big the oil spill is? at this point in time we don t. the measurements we have received, of course, show pretty low concentration so far. but the data that s coming onshore now may change our mind on that. one of the big issues, of course, is that we have so much oil coming out of that well that these are levels of pollution, so to speak, that we ve never seen before. we have to be concerned about that. and there s a couple of reasons why we re worried about oxygen depletion. one is, of course, the oil can be biodegraded. and that can actually deplete oxygen. once that happens you can have more animals die, and then other bacteria will deplete the oxygen