Oil submersion in a wind driven sea

Although freshly spilled oil is buoyant and almost always floats on the surface, the action of water turbulence, and particularly that generated by breaking waves can disintegrate floating oil layers into slicklets, blobs or droplets. The oil droplets can then be entrained into the water column by turbulence and subsurface Langmuir circulations. Small oil droplets having diameters in the range of tens to hundreds /spl mu/m are essentially neutrally-buoyant particles and can be dispersed as deep as Langmuir cells can penetrate. Larger oil droplets with diameters of mm have buoyant rise speeds comparable with the downwelling velocity of Langmuir cells, and they can be suspended in a subsurface retention zone at the downwelling sites. The successful trapping of droplets at the retention zone requires that turbulence be strong enough to pump down the droplets floating on the surface. When Langmuir cells merge with each other, packets of oil droplets collected at the downwelling sites are carried around and redistributed. The Stommel retention zone is not an effective trapping agent when Langmuir cells amalgamate.<>