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John Paul says, at first, he couldn't believe his own scientific data showing toxic microscopic marine organisms in the Gulf of Mexico. He repeated the field test. A colleague did his own test. All the results came back the same: toxic.

It was the first time Paul and other University of South Florida scientists had made such a finding since they started investigating the environmental damage from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The preliminary results, the scientists believe, show that oil that has settled on the floor is contaminating small sea organisms.

Paul is a marine microbiologist with the University of South Florida. He and 13 other researchers were in the middle of a 10-day research mission that began August 6 in the Gulf of Mexico when they made the toxic discovery.

The researchers battled 12-foot waves and storms but returned to St. Petersburg, Florida Monday night.

We were there as the team pulled its research materials into the lab and got the first report back of their initial findings.

The researchers found micro-droplets of oil scattered across the ocean floor and they also found those droplets moving up through a part of the Gulf called the DeSoto Canyon, a channel which funnels water and nutrients into the popular commercial and recreational waters along the Florida Gulf Coast.
The scientists say even though it's getting harder to see the oil the Gulf is still not safe.

"This whole concept of submerged oil and the application of dispersants in the subsurface and what are the impacts that it could have, have changed the paradigm of what an oil spill is from a 2-dimensional surface disaster to a 3-dimensional catastrophe," said David Hollander, a chemical oceanographer and one of the lead scientists on the recent USF mission.

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A day after fall shrimping season began in the Gulf of Mexico and the state of Alabama reopened coastal waters to fishing, a major environmental watchdog group called for more stringent testing of seafood.

The National Resources Defense Council released a statement Tuesday saying it sent letters to the Food and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, co-signed by almost two dozen Gulf coast groups, asking the government agencies to:

-- ensure that there is comprehensive monitoring of seafood contamination.

-- ensure public disclosure of all seafood monitoring data and methods.

-- ensure that fishery re-opening criteria protect the most vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women and subsistence fishing communities.

"With the opening of shrimping season and near-daily reopening of fishing areas, seafood safety is a major issue right now," Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council, said in the statement. "The government needs to show it is putting strong safety criteria and testing standards in place to ensure that the seafood from the Gulf will be safe to eat in the months and years to come."

Louisiana shrimpers such as Anthony Bourgeoif say more needs to be done, and soon.

"It's open down over here with small shrimp, where it should be open over there where the big shrimp are," Bourgeoif said. "Can't make no money with no little shrimp, man."

Bourgeoif said he planned to go out, because "I ain't made nothing since the BP spill." But he was concerned that inspectors might find signs of oil in his catch and make him dump it.

"So why go out there and catch it if they're just going to be dumped, and I ain't going to make no money off it?" he asked. "I've got to make money. I've got four grandkids I'm raising."

A team from Georgia Sea Grant and the University of Georgia released a report that estimates that 70 to 79 percent of the oil that gushed from the well "has not been recovered and remains a threat to the ecosystem," the university said in a release.

Plankton and other organisms at the base of the food chain showed a "strong toxic response" to the crude, and the oil could resurface later, according to researchers.

"The dispersant is moving the oil down out of the surface and into the deeper waters, where it can affect phytoplankton and other marine life," said John Paul, a marine microbiologist at the University of South Florida.

The University of Georgia study "strongly contradicts" a 2-week-old government report saying that only 26 percent of the oil spilled from the well remains in the Gulf.

"That is just absolutely incorrect in the opinion of the scientists," Charles Hopkinson, the director of Georgia Sea Grant and a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, said Tuesday.

The Georgia study said the government's numbers were skewed for several reasons.

First, because 800,000 barrels of oil were collected from the well before it could spill into the Gulf, the Georgia researchers said a total of 4.1 million barrels spilled into the water. But other factors mean more of that oil remains in the water, they said.

In addition, the Georgia researchers used a fundamentally different definition of when oil is "gone" from the water.

"One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless," Hopkinson said. "The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade."

And that oil is a lot harder to see than the huge clumps that dotted the Gulf's face like black and brown acne weeks ago. Samantha Joye, another professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, said that naturally dispersed oil was forming plumes in the water -- but "not black, not brown, turbid sea water. You don't need a river of oil. It's oil that's dissolved in water."

Joye stressed that the government also had completely omitted a crucial component of the environmental pollution from its statistics.

She said NOAA did not measure a third of the hydrocarbons because it did not measure gas emission, which she says are "mostly still in water floating somewhere out there. ... Methane and other gases aren't being documented."

Engineers are now concerned about how to manage the risk of pressure in the annulus, a ring that surrounds the casing pipe at the center of the well shaft.From those pressure readings, they believe that either some of the cement breached the casing pipe and leaked into the annulus, or cement came up into the annulus from the bottom.

The scientists believe that process may have trapped some oil between the cement and the top of the well, inside the annulus. Now, given that new variable, they're trying to figure out how to safely maintain the pressure within the well before launching the "bottom kill," a procedure aimed at sealing the well from below.

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