The weathering of tar on Bermuda

Abstract

Abstract The indices to determine the weathering of crude oil, which were developed by Blumer, Ehrhardt and Jones (Deep-Sea Research, 20, 239–259, 1973), were applied with success to the tar that is being deposited on Bermuda. Relative to the fresh, floating incoming tar, sunken tar shows pronounced microbiological degradation while tar adhering to the rocky shore shows evaporative loss with less microbial degradation. Surprisingly, normal alkanes with an even number of carbon appear to be more prone to microbial degradation than the ones with an odd carbon number.