Sightings of suspected oil in the seas around The Bahamas from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be investigated by scientists setting out on a five-day expedition to Cay Sal and Bimini on Monday.

The team of International Maritime Organization (IMO) scientists and volunteers will take sediment samples and test them on the Defence Force vessel HMS Bahamas to confirm or deny the presence of oil in Bahamian waters.

The National Oil Spill Committee is on alert as concerned citizens have reported sightings of what they believe to be oil sheens in Bahamian waters.

Director of the Bahamas Environment, Science and Technology Commission (BEST) Philip Weech said the dark patches spotted in the ocean are more likely to be large clumps of dark seaweed drifting in the ocean than the oil slicks in the Gulf of Mexico, which they resemble.

"If there is oil in the Bahamas yet, we don't know," Mr Weech said.

"We have been getting a lot of calls and concerns of that nature and many are coming from the fact that people are seeing what they would normally see when they fly over, which is seaweed, which looks like what you see on the international news, but what we expect to see here would be weathered black tar balls.

"We are almost 800 miles away from the oil head so it's going to be a completely different scenario."

Oil sheens containing thousands of tar balls have hit the south coast of the United States in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, and some reports claim these sheens have already left the Gulf.

The National Oil Spill Committee will spend five days in Cay Sal Banks, the westernmost point of the Bahamas 145km west of Andros Island, and Bimini, collecting oceanic and terrestrial samples to test on the RBDF vessel and determine whether or not oil has left the Gulf.

They will be assisted by trained volunteers from the College of the Bahamas, the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, the Department of Marine Resources, other government departments and environmental protection agencies who will continue sampling work in the northern Abaco cays and Grand Bahama.

More samples will be taken on the slower, more detailed exercise than the previous two-day expedition to Cay Sal last month which showed no signs of oil from the spill and have been stored in a tamper-free US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) certified laboratory.

The team of scientists include leading marine ecologist Dr Ethan Freid and marine biologist Kathleen Sealy from the International Maritime Organization.

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