Dr. Samantha Joye, professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, whose research team first spotted evidence of vast undersea plumes of oil near the BP oil disaster, was on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night to explain the theory of how plumes form and the steps they were taking to confirm and plot the plumes’ size and reach.

Tony Hayward, when he’s not sticking his foot in his mouth, has devised a great idea to put BP back on top — an ad campaign.

In 1989, Grigori Medvedev wrote The Truth About Chernobyl, describing both what happened to cause the 1986 nuclear accident and what can be learned from it. In watching the continuing BP oil disaster, it is clear we are receiving exactly the same lessons in the fraility and vulnerability of life, both human and marine, and the price that hubris and pride exacts. Medvedev called for forceful truthtelling to avoid glossing over what happened in Chernobyl and to learn from it, and the accident in the Gulf demands exactly the same.

While NOAA is publicly backing down from the press reports of giant plumes of oil below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon spill, it is interesting to look at the research plans that NOAA previously put into place for dealing with oil spills. The most recent five year research plan from NOAA (pdf) has some interesting tidbits that relate to the ongoing spill and NOAA’s response, especially when it comes to the question of oil below the surface.

On Saturday, the New York Times brought the world’s attention to the discovery by a team of researchers on the the vessel Pelican that there are large underwater plumes of oil emanating from the Deepwater Horizon spill. Remarkably, the response of the government to the attention focused on this discovery has been to tell the researchers to stop granting interviews with the press. At the same time, the blog on which the researchers had been providing updates has also fallen silent since Saturday.

Last weekend, the NYT quoted several ocean scientists collecting samples in the area of the BP oil disaster to the effect that there could be large plumes of oil at various depths below the Gulf surface. Today, however, the NOAA issued a disclaimer, without telling us why.

An anonymous Senator (or Senators) has put a hold on the nominations of John Holdren to be White House science advisor, and on Jane Lubchenco to head NOAA. The office of the early suspect, NJ Senator Bob Menendez, denied Thursday that he has a hold on the nomination. Nobody now knows who placed the hold, or why.