What is going on here? Newly appreciated weathering mechanisms in Macondo well oil

On April 20, 2010, a loss of control of the exploratory Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico led to a fire and explosion resulting in the loss of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, and eleven lives. This tragedy and the failure of control mechanisms on the well caused the largest marine oil spill in United States history. During and following clean-up operations, a tremendous amount of research was conducted with respect to the fate and transport of the spilled oil, and also the environmental impacts of the spill. This unprecedented attention to the behaviour of spilled oil has illuminated several transport, weathering, and sedimentary processes that were unrecognized in previous spills. Specifically; the formation of a subsurface "plume" comprised of soluble hydrocarbons and microdroplets of insoluble oil molecules, the biotic and abiotic oxygenation of hydrocarbons that made it to the surface and to the shoreline, and Marine Oil Snow Sedimentation and Flocculent Accumulation (MOSSFA) controlling deposition and fate of oil in the offshore. This presentation will document how these processes were "discovered" during the Deepwater Horizon spill and will hypothesize whether these processes occurred in previous spills. (author)