Oil trails in Gulf of Mexico are up to 10 miles long as BP continues its fight to stem flow from broken rig

Still leaking: Oil platforms and boats surround the site of the Deepwater Horizon rig

Race against time: Members of the Alabama National Guard build a temporary wall to protect the beaches in Dauphin Island from the oil

Growing concern: This satellite image shows a clearly-defined oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists have discovered huge plumes of oil lurking under the surface of the water

Energy giant BP's latest desperate attempt to siphon gushing oil from a broken pipe in the Gulf of Mexico has failed as the toxic slick grows to 10 miles long.

As BP struggled to contain the environmental disaster, scientists have found enormous oil plumes lurking beneath the surface of the water, including one as large as 10 miles long, three miles wide and 300ft thick.

The discovery suggests that the leak could be 'substantially worse' than estimates given previously by BP and the government.
BP had hoped the tricky undersea effort to redirect the flow of oil would be operational by this morning.



The latest fix involves guiding undersea robots to insert a small tube into a 21-inch pipe, known as a riser, to funnel the oil to a ship at the surface.

But engineers failed to connect two pieces of equipment a mile below the water's surface.

Doug Suttles, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said one piece of equipment, called the framework, had to be brought to the water's surface so that adjustments could be made to where it fits with the long tube that connects to a tanker above.

The framework holds a pipe and stopper, and engineers piloting submarine robots will try to use it to plug the massive leak and send the crude through the lengthy pipe to the surface.

'The frame shifted, so they were unable to make that connection,' Mr Suttles said.Crude oil is gushing unchecked into the sea from a blown-out offshore well a mile deep on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, threatening an ecological and economic calamity along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Officials said that so far the spill has had minimal impact on the shoreline and wildlife, but oil debris and tarballs were washing up on barrier islands and outlying beaches in at least a dozen places in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

Rsearchers from the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology detected large oil plumes from just beneath the surface of the sea to more than 4,000ft deep.

Three or four large plumes have been found, at least one that is 10 miles long and a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide, said Samantha Joye, a marine science professor supporting the mission from her University of Georgia lab.

Researchers Vernon Asper and Arne Dierks said the plumes were 'perhaps due to the deep injection of dispersants which BP has stated that they are conducting'.

These researchers are also testing the effects of large amounts of sub-sea oil on oxygen levels in the water.

The oil can deplete oxygen in the water, harming plankton and other tiny creatures that serve as food for a wide variety of sea critters.

Oxygen levels in some areas have dropped 30 per cent, and should continue to drop, Miss Joye said.

'It could take years, possibly decades, for the system to recover from an infusion of this quantity of oil and gas

'We've never seen anything like this before. It's impossible to fathom the impact.'

Miss Joye's lab was waiting for the research boat to return so a team of scientists can test about 75 water samples and 100 sediment samples gathered during the voyage.

Researchers plan to go back out in about a month and sample the same areas to see if oil and oxygen levels have worsened.

One observer said BP's latest idea seemed to have the best chance for success so far.

Inserting a pipe into the oil gusher would be easy at the surface, said Ed Overton, a LSU professor of environmental studies.

But using robots in 5,000ft of water with oil rushing out of the pipe makes things much more difficult.

'It's something like threading the eye of a needle. But that can be tough to do up here. And you can imagine how hard it would be to do it down there with a robot,' Mr Overton said.

Scientists and residents of the Gulf Coast say a far greater concern is the anticipated encroachment of oil into the environmentally fragile bayous and marshes teeming with shrimp, oysters, crabs, fish, birds and other wildlife.

Workers in Louisiana were outraged at comments by BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward suggesting that the size of the spill was 'tiny' compared to the size of the Gulf of Mexico.

'I think he's nuts,' said Kenneth Theriot, 56, a shrimp boat owner and captain in the Louisiana town of Chauvin.

'I don't care how big the Gulf is. It's all coming here.'

Shrimpers and fishermen have been idled by commercial fishing closures imposed because of the spill.

BP's initial attempt to insert the tube into the riser ran into trouble when the metal frame that supports the siphon shifted, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said.

Workers were still trying to get the siphoning tube inserted today.

'We continued to work towards deploying the tool overnight and hooking up with the riser. Operations continue to make progress,' a BP spokesman said.

The spill began after an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers.

It threatens to eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska as the worst U.S. ecological disaster ever.