UPDATE June 09, 2010: This research has just been returned which seems to verify what I had speculated in May that there are indeed higher levels of Methane 10,000 times higher:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/06/gulf-oil-spill-waters-shot-through-with-a-mist-of-oil.html
BREAKING UPDATE: MAY 15, 2010
I RAN ACROSS THIS PASSAGE IN A TRULY FRIGHTENING ARTICLE I WAS READING ON THE CURRENT OIL LEAK TOTALS:
A volcano of oil erupting
by
Paul Noel with
Sterling D. Allan
for
Pure Energy Systems News
"Natural Gas
The Natural Gas emissions are stunning as well. As you watch the film remember the pipe is 5 feet in diameter.
The Natural Gas doesn't just bubble to the top of the ocean and release into the air. It is absorbed into the water, like air is absorbed, and actually creates oxygen depletion. Hence, the emission of natural gas of these volumes into the sea is producing a significant area of Oxygen depleted water in the Gulf of Mexico which may be very large threat to fisheries and other wildlife in the area. "
Could Gulf of Mexico Turtles and other wildlife, mysteriously dying and washing ashore near the BP Oil Rig accident be the victims of
methane or some other kind of chemical exposure, that was/is being inadvertently released in vast amounts due to the melt down at the Deep Water Horizon well disaster?
Methane is an
asphyxiant and may displace
oxygen
"It's not the spilled oil, said officials. At least 35 dead turtles have been found washed up on shore, an unusual number. But necropsies
found they were clean of the toxic brown crude that has been spewing from the floor of the Gulf since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and burned, 50 miles off the
Louisiana coast."
"The deadly blowout of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding."
"The effort to place a containment dome over a gushing wellhead was dealt a setback when a large volume of hydrates - crystals formed when gas combines with water - accumulated inside of the vessel, BP's chief operating officer said Saturday."
We have the recent revelation that the containment dome BP tried to use to stop the gushing well at Deep Water Horizon (Mississippi Canyon 252) was stymied by methane hydrates - crystals formed when gas combines with water.
I was recently searching for news updates about the oil leak and ran across this discussion board. The subject was:
"BREAKING - Gulf Oil Spill is Releasing Methane - CONFIRMED METHANE HYDRATES
This confirms a large amount of Methane Hydrate is flooding from the well."
As I began to read the various thoughts and conspiracies I did wonder, What if 'methane' could be what is killing the Sea Life that keeps washing ashore without signs of oil contamination?"
As with most message boards sooner or later you run across people bringing pertinent information to the table.
From page 6 of the thread:
"Here are the points confirming Methane release...
(1) Hydrate Crystals formed in the containment box.
(2) Reddish/Orange slick
(3) Methane was what detonated on the Rig
(4) Location of punctured reserves"
"Mining the Oceans' Natural Gas
By Katrina C. Arabe
Below the ocean floor lies a vast reserve of frozen natural gas--200,000 trillion cubic feet, geologists estimate. The big question is--could this be the clean and abundant fuel source we've been searching for?
Since the 1970s, researchers have been intrigued by methane hydrates, mysterious deposits of natural gas that hold promise as a sustainable energy resource. The problem was that very little was known about these crystalline solids--where they could be found, how plentiful they were, and how to extract them. As a result, their true potential remained shrouded in mystery.
Not anymore. According to a February 2005 Mechanical Engineering magazine article, dedicated research programs in the U.S. and around the world are uncovering many answers. Encouragingly, they suggest that the "commercial production of methane from hydrate may now be just around the corner," says the article. It reports that through field studies in places such as the waters off Oregon, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Alaskan North Slope, it's become evident that tapping into the methane in these solids is both "technically feasible and economically viable." And it can be done with current technologies. In fact, in Alaska, geologists are already plotting out ways to commercially produce methane from the hydrates they have spotted.
What's more, the vastness of this potential resource has been backed up by data. Ten years ago, the U.S. Geological Survey was the first to systematically quantify the methane volumes in hydrates in the U.S. and bounding continental shelves. Now, integrating the latest data, geologists place that estimate at 200,000 trillion cubic feet, which is equivalent to about 2,000 times the current amount of energy the U.S. consumes in a year. Global estimates, meanwhile, vary by several orders of magnitude, due to remaining uncertainties. However, even by the most conservative figures, gas-in-place volumes in methane hydrates are said to be 10 times greater than all recoverable natural gas in the world.
Article author Ray Boswell, technology manager for methane hydrates at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory, points out that the viable production of methane from these hydrates will help ensure the "long-term supply of natural gas, an environmentally friendly fuel with enormous economic and energy security benefits to the nation."
These frozen undersea deposits of natural gas are exceedingly difficult to study, however. Found in marine sediments and in the Arctic, they melt at room temperature at sea level, dissociating into water and methane. (Methane hydrate is a solid substance, in which host water molecules trap methane molecules without bonding them.) Thus, specialized equipment, such as pressure-retaining containers, and sophisticated technologies, such as computed tomography X-ray scanning and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, are a must in the study of methane hydrates.
According to Mechanical Engineering, "the promise of methane hydrate is this: It is a very efficient storehouse of energy. When dissociated, a single cubic foot of solid hydrate releases as much as 180 cubic feet of methane gas." In methane hydrates, the natural gas is trapped solid within.
Now the tough part is figuring out how to competitively mine this resource. They reside after all in tough-to-reach low temperature-high pressure settings, in particular in sediments under some 500 meters or more of water and in some Arctic continental areas. Deep-water operations obviously will not come cheap. What's more, the environmental implications of exploiting these deposits still have to be explored.
Mechanical Engineering poses the question, "Will methane hydrate fuel the future?" The answer seems to be "we'll see"--researchers still have to figure out how much producible methane there is in these frozen deposits.
Source:
Buried Treasure
Ray Boswell"
--------------
This is a subject I'm completely in the dark about... I'm almost sure I'm completely wrong... so I rely upon the expertise of others to explain why this could or could not be the case for the mysterious wildlife deaths in the Gulf of Mexico.
Could it be that BP somehow punctured, tapped into or ruptured some sort of Methane or other type of deadly chemical pool that is uncontrollably venting in tandem with the oil that could be killing certain sea creatures?
"Oil leak" has created a need for a new category of disaster descriptor. 
