On April 20th 2010, an oil rig in The Gulf of Mexico exploded, spewing thousands of barrels of oil into the coastal water a day. The pip was finally cap 87 days later.

This oil spill contaminated 75 billion cubic yard of water over 113 days, destroying billion of fishes, oyters, invertebrate species, and thousand of birds and dolphins. It also have damaged many habitats.

Five years later, 2 to 16 percent of the oil still lays on the ocean floor.

So we can wonder: How to clean up all this oil? There are several solutions but each has their advantages and disadvantages:

First of all, we can circle ad confine the oil with blooms, which are sort of floating barriers, because oil the oil does'nt mix with water and just float on top.

We can also use dispersants or chemical emulsifer wich are sprayed thanks to planes. They contain surfactants wich break up oil. Then, the oil disperse more easily into the water, and can't reach the shoreline and damage fragile ecosystem. But, dispersants are toxic for corals, so it's not a really good solution.

Another solution can be to use sort of absorbents or sponges, like clay or straw, but they also soak up a lot of water.

Other solutions to clean up water  are considered by scientists, like the creation of new sponges made of chemically modified wood called nanofibrillated cellulose. But, I think that the best solution is to do everything to avoid oil spill, because even if the oil is clen up rapidly, it will have horrible impacts on the ecosystem and on habitats.