and wait -- there's more!
22 miles long, 1.2 miles wide and 650 feet tall -- about 60 stories -- 3000 feet underwater!
That's no plume, that's a massive toxic cloud that shows no sign of abating. BP's dispersant legacy. Perhaps it's lucky that it's not showing signs of abating, since that would mean oil-eating microbes would be eating it with an oxygen chaser, and that layer is currently not showing severe oxygen-depletion. We wouldn't want a dead zone at 3000 feet.
But that toxic cloud is still a problem for a very important reason: the "Deep Scattering Layer," or DSL, which is the great, dense, daily dumbwaiter of thick marine life that moves up toward the surface, and then back down again, in a constant cycle.
Moving daily through this toxic cloud.