Summary
MIAMI - Deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico lies a dark and frigid world surprisingly abundant in otherworldly forms of life, much of it fed by gases and oil that seep out of fissures in the sea floor.
Here on the sea floor, at near-freezing temperatures and crushing depths that can reach 9,000 feet, are methane-munching bacterial mats; mussels the size of a big man's foot; tube-shaped animals that grow 10 feet long and live more than 250 years, and expansive beds of coral that thrive in total darkness.See the full content of this document
Extract
Oil Invades a Dark, Mysterious World On Gulf's Floor
Much of this life was utterly unknown until the dawn of deep-sea oil exploration in the early 1980s, which led the federal government - and in particular the Minerals Management Service, the agency now under fire for lax supervision of deepwater rigs - to finance ex...
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