Microscopic Bacteria In The Gulf Digested Much Of The Oil Spill Hydrocarbons

From "After the Great Spill: How the Gulf Cleaned Itself" by Bryan Walsh in TIME:

the Gulf proved to be much more resilient to the oil spill than scientists might have expected. The vast majority of the oil and other hydrocarbons seem to be gone, less than six months after the crude stopped flowing. And the biggest heroes of the cleanup turned out not to be the thousands of workers who scoured oil from the beaches or the shrimp-boat captains who turned their vessels into oil skimmers. It's actually microscopic bacteria in the Gulf, which digested much of the hydrocarbons while they were still deep under the surface.

Read the complete TIME article here.