Oil spills Pictures

Photo by Chris Combs, Nationwide Geographic

Although huge quantities of oil exposure are detrimental to marsh flowers (pictured: a Grand Bay marsh on July 3), the flowers in addition obviously produce oil in little volumes, Finch noted.

"There's almost no element of oil that can't [naturally] be located inside marsh, " he said, including oil components phenol and benzene.

Plants probably produce the toxic compounds to discourage predators from gnawing in it excessively. And marsh microbes win away because they eat—or break down—the oil the plants develop. (Review exactly how nature is cleaning up the Gulf oil spill.)

"the difficulty is, " Finch said, when there's an increase of hefty oil, the oil-eating microbes might get haywire, sucking up most of the oxygen and possibly producing an oxygen-deprived area. (See "Gulf Oil Spill a 'Dead Zone in Making'?")

It's also more difficult to get rid of the oil from coastal marshes, since some administration techniques—such as controlled burns—are tougher in those surroundings, Tx Tech University ecotoxicologist Ron Kendall stated on May 12.