Question

Role of microbes in oil pollution control

Answer 1

Soon after an oil spill, a layer of oil floats on the sea surface, where large populations of marine organisms like sea algae, marine mammals, birds and fishes die off, due to poisoning and suffocation. While dispersed oil droplets sink to bottom of the ocean and harm the benthic community. Another major consequence of oil spills is the rapid changes in the local microbial communities. This is due to the sudden availability of large quantity of hydrocarbons which they use as a source of energy and carbon. This microbial degradation of oil hydrocarbons is the main source of oil spills remediation in the natural environment. This has also been used to artificially stimulate remediation in events of extensive spills. Although bacteria, yeast and fungi, all are capable of degrading a complex mixture of oil-hydrocarbons, bacteria possess the highest efficiency. So bacteria are the main degraders of oil hydrocarbons.

Following such oil spill incidents, the local marine microbial community experiences changes in structure and ecology. In such events, microbes capable of utilizing different hydrocarbon compounds as source of energy become the dominant species of that community and consequently assist in biodegradation processes. Post the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon spills in the Gulf of Mexico, numerous research studies have been undertaken to observe the type and rate of changes within the local microbial communities. These studies reveals multiple factors of community interactions, genetic and metabolic diversity and chemical and geological processes, besides previous pollution history 

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