Samantha Joye, an oceanographer at the University of Georgia who is studying the oil spill’s potential effects on Gulf marine life, said water samples that she and colleagues have taken show a more worrisome drop in oxygen levels than was reported recently by a separate group of federal researchers aboard a different ship.
Workers collect tar balls Saturday along Crystal Beach in Texas. Officials say they are still testing whether the tar balls resulted from the oil spill.
The federal scientists were testing an area closer to the leaking wellhead, where the oil was fresher, Ms. Joye said. Oil farther away, which had been in the water longer, was more likely to have attracted oil-eating bacteria that reduce oxygen levels, she said.
“It certainly isn’t safe to conclude there is no oxygen problem, based on oxygen measurements that are made close to the spill site,” Ms. Joye said in a call Tuesday with reporters. Referring to the federal tests, she said: “I don’t think that’s a wise way to make conclusions about oxygen.”
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From the Wall Street Journal…