A Customs spokesman said in April that no evidence was presented to the review that indicated the Ocean Protector knew the correct location of the Indonesian boundaries.
Rasmussen, who reports his results in the current issue of Geology, believes the abundance and extent of the kerogen in the shales indicates the ocean was already teeming with enough single-celled life 3.25 billion years ago to support widespread oil generation.
"But if, as this piece of work is beginning to indicate, the oceans have a role in the Antarctic Peninsula as well then actually we have to start thinking about ice shelves around the rest of the Antarctic on those same time scales of several decades," he said.
Gray contours indicate the ocean-bottom topography.
Seasonal dynamics of phytopigment concentrations in the ocean is one of the key factors indicating the types and intensity of hydrobiological exchange processes in the ocean surface layer.
The research team say that it indicates that the ocean's potential to absorb CO2 fluctuates more over time than previously thought.
"Overall the results of the plume analyses - this work and previous work by this same team - indicate that the ocean is habitable: it is composed of water of reasonable salinity and pH, contains organic material, and contains biologically useful energy sources," he said.
The findings indicate that the ocean was teeming with primitive organisms 3.2 billion years ago, just over a billion years after the planet formed.
On Fort Lauderdale Beach, tourists and locals alike still enjoyed a day of sun as lifeguard stands flew green flags to indicate that the ocean was calm, no matter what sort of storm loomed beyond the horizon.
Siegel says that ocean color, which indicates the presence of ocean life near the surface, was once thought to be too subtle a phenomenon to measure with the flawed sensor.
