Returning to the site two days later, on the 20th of September, to survey the site and to do some wide angle photography he found the impacted area was now covered with a layer of cloudy or milky water. Water clarity was reduced to only a few feet which rendered wide angle photography difficult. After examining the site, with regard to the extent of the dead zone, it appeared that depth didn’t seem to be a critical factor, at least on the shallow side of the site and topography didn’t seem to have enough differences to cause the changes, either.
On a return to the site on 22nd September, the area containing dying animals was not only still present it was spreading; whatever seemed to be the cause was still doing its dirty work. Documenting the milky water was difficult, as the layer was not particularly well defined, nevertheless, there was a lot of flocculent material floating in it. The sites he had previously photographed were now wholly within “the Milky Way” which made photography difficult. However, outside the cloudy water, the many tube dwelling worms in the area’s sediments were apparently unaffected. The milky water appeared to be created from within the sediments. The water was not cloudy like this when he first found all the infaunal creatures on the surface.