While BP has taken a hit financially as a result of the oil spill, mainly due to continuing and impending lawsuits and selling off assets, the company is also getting quite a bit of pro bono help.
Who would help BP for free at this point you ask? Well, it turns out that a fair amount of the gulf coast is being cleaned up by a little bacterium called Alcanivorax. While no one is debating that the sheer size of this spill will continue to have a detrimental impact on both the economic and environmental future of the region, according to a recent New York Times article, it turns out that some of nature’s smallest specimens are actually well adapted to oil being in the ecosystem. This mainly due to the fact that small (not BP/Transocean type spills) amounts of oil have been seeping into the Gulf for millions of years.
Of course it wouldn’t be surprising if BP patted itself on the back for their dispersion plan, which was backed by “scientists” who believe the natural environment would take care of the cleanup itself. Obviously this would be an absurd claim but it is always interesting to see ways in which the environment and various species adapt and can even aid in a disaster such as this one.
Perhaps BP should invest what little money they have left in Alcanivorax reproduction, just to cover their bases.
Image Credit by darrowassoc via Flickr under a CC license
