Natural oil seepage.

[enginesrus]

Many years ago the tune was different on the topic of oceanic seepage of oil. I remember a Scientific American article about it and how they discovered marine life using it for food.
That topic now seems to be scrubbed from the internet, as it does not fit the agenda. Does anyone remember that article as well as a cable tv show that also showed that same topic?

 

[FacEngrPE]

The information is not all gone - look for papers on bio-remediation.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=importance+of+oil+spill+bioremediation&ia=web

The only way we would have oil eating microbes in the environment is that there has always been trace amounts of oil to be eaten.
Here is a video discussing ecology of oil seeps

https://youtu.be/8wfNJSlg3Zg

 

[TugboatEng]

Google still has some functionality if you use framing in your searches. Search "before:2010 LA oil seepage" and such. You'll get more honest and factual articles on the subject.

 

[enginesrus]

Not just oil eating microbes, there were actual fish eating the oil. That was the only food they had other than maybe other smaller fish.
Zero light at the depths, so maybe there was warmth from the bubbles of oil that attracted them. It was also on a cable tv show that a friend saw.
This was over 20 plus years ago.

 

[SkipVought]

Oh,my! Winston mustav missed that one!

Skip,
[sub]
Just traded in my OLD subtlety...
for a NUance![/sub]

 

[TugboatEng]

Fish have olfactory receptors. It would make sense that they could smell the oil. With the very high thermal conductivity of water and somewhat high conductivity of oil, I would expect any bubbles of oil to equalize in temperature with the water far to quickly for temperature detection to be useful.