WASHINGTON — Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a scientist’s video and slides that demonstrate the oil isn’t degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

At a science conference in Washington, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn’t.

‘There’s some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn’t seem to be degrading,’ Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

‘Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don’t know,’ Joye said, later adding: ‘there’s a lot of it out there.’

The head of the agency in charge of the health of the Gulf said Saturday […]