'Slime highway' of BP oil suspected on Gulf floor

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Fluffy residue found at various sites both far from and near wellhead

Samples taken from the seafloor near BP's blown-out wellhead indicate miles of murky, oily residue sitting atop hard sediment. Moreover, inside that residue are dead shrimp, zooplankton, worms and other invertebrates.

"I expected to find oil on the sea floor," Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia marine sciences professor, said Monday morning in a ship-to-shore telephone interview. "I did not expect to find this much. I didn't expect to find layers two inches thick."

The scientists aboard the research vessel Oceanus suspect it's all from the BP spill, but will have to wait until they return to shore this week to confirm it's the same oil source.

"It has to be a recent event," Joye said. "There's still pieces of warm bodies there."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39150640/ns/us_news-environment/