Do you have any oil spill clear up ideas?

Looking at oil spill pictures in New Zealand, I began to wonder who cleaned up the oil from ships sunk in WW II. Any ideas? Where did it go?

• Answer:

  Nature can clear up oil spills, over time. Bacteria exist which will literally eat the oil. Indeed, there is significant natural leakage of oil into the US Gulf all the time, which is generally dealt ith by resident bacteria. The problem with human releases is that they are simply too big and too concentrated in one place for nature to deal with. But all the spills from WW2 have long been eaten up.