Multimedia : A Plume of Chemicals from Deepwater Horizon

Mapping the Plume
This animation simulates how the autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry zigzagged in the depths while the TETHYS mass spectrometer aboard detected hydrocarbon compounds in the seawater. The plume did not actually look like this. Rather, the plume was a body of clear, odorless water with high concentrations of hydrocarbons moving within the ocean. (Animation by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

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