There’s a parallel universe in the Gulf these days. In one, the water’s clear, the beaches clean and the seafood's as sublime as ever. The other is the one I witnessed last month, a world many fear may be closer to the truth.
I had been attending a rally—the Big Oil Panty Protest to be exact—in Grand Isle, ground zero for the BP oil assault and a spit of sand and beach town sticking out from Louisiana’s most southern coast. It was a beautiful Gulf morning when I decided to take a walk on the beach at Grand Isle State Park. The sand was warming and the ocean water was muddy but calm. A flock of seabirds gathered on a nearby sandbar. Except for an orange plastic fence blocking off part of the beach, all appeared normal. Several families and their children had plopped down their towels and umbrellas. The kids eagerly jumped in the waves.
But the beach scene was soon to change. A uniformed park ranger packing a 9 mm pistol and a broad-brimmed hat marched through the sand towards us, clearly on a mission. “Excuse me but everyone here needs to get off the beach,” he barked. “This beach is closed.”
The family vacationers approached the officer incredulously. “Why,” they asked. “We just got here. There aren’t any signs?”
“The beach is closed because there’s still oil and tar balls coming in,” the officer said in a polite but stern voice. “It’s not safe to be here.”
The families grudgingly packed up their beach gear, grabbed their kids and trudged back to their cars. “It looks fine to me,” one mother said. “It doesn’t seem right.”
But it was right. The officer told me later there were tar balls everywhere on the beach the day before. Locals say there are huge mats of hardened oil on the seabed just off the shoreline, pieces of which wash in with the tides daily. Locals take pictures of dead birds and animals they say they’ve never seen before, and those are just the ones the beach crews miss when they comb the area every morning.
Beach cleanup crews and tar balls on Grand Isle this month Photos: Betty Doud
In Grand Isle, people swim in the waters often oblivious to the oily tar balls that wash in around them. It’s like that across the Gulf. Everyone hopes for a clean rejuvenated ocean this year, a return to normalcy for those who’ve suffered a world of hurt after BP’s historic blowout. The tourist industry and government officials are hard at work pushing this vision through major ad and PR campaigns.
But it’s far from the real world. Scientific investigations are moving through the painstaking process of analyzing the impacts of 170 million plus gallons of oil that spewed into the sea. Although it will be years before the full effects are known, some researchers are already seeing some disturbing findings. Recently scientists discovered lesions in red snapper they are investigating as having possible links to the oil. Here’s what the Pensacola News Journal reported last weekend:
In the years following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound, the herring fishery collapsed and has not recovered, according to an Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee report. The herring showed similar signs of illness — including skin lesions — that are showing up in Gulf fish.
Worried that same scenario could play out along the Gulf Coast, Patterson is conducting research on the chronic effects of the BP oil spill on Gulf fish. And he sees troubling signs consistent with oil exposure: fish with lesions, external parasites, odd pigmentation patterns, and diseased livers and ovaries. These may be signs of compromised immune systems in fish that are expending their energy dealing with toxins, Patterson said.
"I've had tens of thousands of fish in my hands and not seen these symptoms in so many fish before," said Patterson, who has been studying fish, including red snapper, for 15 years. "All those symptoms have been seen naturally before, but it's a matter of them all coming at once that we're concerned about."
As high numbers of endangered sea turtles and dolphins have washed into the beaches Mississippi and Alabama beaches in recent months, residents continue combing the beaches on their own, documenting what they’re finding.
In recent days, Charles Taylor was driving near Bay St Louis when he noticed what appeared to be a sheen of oil stretching out for miles. He snapped a few shots with his cell phone camera and went down to get a closer look. “Must be chocolate, because the oil’s all gone,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
What appears to be oil near Bay St Louis, MS Photos: Charles Taylor
“I’ve got a 5 gallon bucket of them in my garage. The tar balls ranged from pea-size to a really big hamburger,” Hansen said. “BP has not done what they said they would do. It’s still out there on the beach and it is being moved by the waves. That means it can get into Mobile Bay and the Mississippi Sound, into our estuaries and all those places we don’t want it to get to.”
Paul Orr and the Mississippi Riverkeepers have been testing along the coasts of Louisiana for nearly a year now. He described an area of barrier islands and part of the national wildlife seashore he visited in March this way:
By the time we made it to Breton Island the skies had cleared and the sun was shining brightly. The island was alive with spectacular flocks of birds. The spring bird migration is in full swing in coastal Louisiana. Unfortunately the birds were sharing the island with oil. Long trails of heavily oiled sand and scattered tar balls were found spread along the center of the island. The larger oil “patties” were 10 to 12 or more inches in diameter and looked like dark brown sugar with extra molasses mixed in on the inside but smelled like tar.
These are the images and reports BP and the tourist industry doesn’t talk about much. Most tourists have no idea there are 4,000 oil spills a year in the Gulf. Locals say it’s hard to know when beaches are closed and that many aren’t well marked. These problems are not headline news in most coastal tourist towns right now. They are world's apart.
But the size and stakes of this oil threat are still as big as they’ve ever been. At this point, it's hard to say which parallel universe will emerge on top.
Follow Rocky Kistner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rockyatnrdc
The reality is, if done right, and we can do it right, drilling is relatively safe and we need the oil. We need to drill closer to shore so its technically easier and obviates the need for tankers to move the oil. We need to drill in Alaska – very safe – ground to pipeline.
We use a lot of oil and will for decades more so is bringing it in on tankers and paying someone else a great idea? Not really. Some of the biggest oil spills in history have been from tankers.
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/the-13-largest-oil-spills-in-history
Most of them also don't know that half a million barrels of oil naturally seep into the Gulf of Mexico.
Move along, everybody - nothing to see here. :P
Because seeps are dispersed and oil only seeps from them instead of gushing, areas around seeps are still able to support thriving biological communities. Scientists don't even think the animals living near seeps have needed to evolve any adaptations*; seeping oil simply doesn't have that great an effect.
That is not what happens in an oil spill. It is true that the amount of oil that has spilled from this gusher so far is less than the ANNUAL AGGREGATE of all 600+ seeps in the Gulf. But it's all coming out at the same time, in the same place. The water in one location can only degrade so much oil at one time; an oil spill goes far beyond overwhelming the ocean's natural oil-coping mechanisms.
So, in conclusion, the Gulf has a limited ability to deal with oil that seeps out slowly and is widely dispersed. But those capabilities are constantly in use. This spill is gushing massive amounts of oil into one place. Marine ecosystems cannot cope with that assault. And don't forget the toxic dispersants that are accompanying the toxic oil, and the fact that most of the oil is still underwater, where it remains "fresh" (which, like "natural," does not mean good here) longer because it weathers more slowly there.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/j/d/jdf15/2010/05/back-when-this-all-first.php?ref=mp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMvPDK8oJBk
BP, with the Obama administration's knowledge and permission was allowed to constantly spray poisonous, toxic DISPERSANTS into the water. Didn't take them 100 days to start doing it, neither. The effect of the dispersants was NOT to aid in the cleanup. It was, essentially, cosmetic: it made the oil harder to see. Question: how less toxic is an oil droplet once it is no longer readily visible? I suspect it largely RETAINS its toxicity.
"But the oil's not gone." Indeed.
So again I applaud you for writing this article and the HuffingtonPost for publishing it. I know it sometimes seems hopeless, referring to efforts to educate the public about the true state of affairs concerning the oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, but we've got to try, right?
Every time that show is aired I try and watch it, it's become my favorite entertainment.
So when he and his daughter, Sasha, took a dip in the sea off Florida this weekend, only the White House photographer was allowed to capture proceedings.
The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region's beaches are back to normal. Yet it soon emerged that the private beach on which it was taken, off Alligator Point in St Andrew Bay, north-west Florida, isn't technically in the gulf. " http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/president-goes-for-a-swim-in-the-gulf-ndash-or-does-he-2053567.html
The Oil Companies will reap huge profits....we are their slaves and will do anything for what they have. If we don't like it...tough what are we going to do about it. Nothing.
The three biggest crisis's we face in the first part of this century is....a diminishing oil supply, a diminishing fresh water supply....and global climate change. The three are going to really be a perfect storm...and mankind is soon about to be humbled. Wish it wasn't true...but there you go.