title: Comment on "A persistent oxygen anomaly reveals the fate of spilled methane in the deep Gulf of Mexico".
abstract: Kessler et al. (Reports, 21 January 2011, p. 312) reported that methane released from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout, approximately 40% of the total hydrocarbon discharge, was consumed quantitatively by methanotrophic bacteria in Gulf of Mexico deep waters over a 4-month period. We find the evidence explicitly linking observed oxygen anomalies to methane consumption ambiguous and extension of these observations to hydrate-derived methane climate forcing premature.
authors: Department of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA. mjoye@uga.edu
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authors: Villareal