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Good write up on why the hay might not work: http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2010/05/hay-for-oil-spill-...

Also think about what you'd do with the hay once you manage to somehow collect it. You'd have all this hazardous waste that you'd have to end up burying or burning.

Sounds like the existing boats + tools they have work fine for cleaning it up, it's just a matter of scale. The real problem is that the leak is huge, and there's just craploads of oil to clean up.

You're going to have hazardous waste regardless.

Granted, this is on a massive scale that I have a hard time even imagining...but Paul Stamets has shown phenomenal results using oyster mushrooms to do mycoremediation.

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