* Anatomy of an Oil Spill Part I: The Sea Shepherd‘s Bonny Schumaker recently flew New Orleans blogger Dambala out over the Gulf of Mexico’s shelf. He photodocuments the flight from New Orleans over Raccoon Island, LA (Louisiana’s most important seabird nesting site west of Breton Sound) to the Deepwater Horizon site and then to Horn Island, MS and Ocean Springs Airport, MS and back.
One thing which became immediately apparent was the large amount of failed boom, not just at Racoon, but all over the barrier islands.
… After leaving Racoon, we took off toward the Horizon well site. We immediately ran into signs of oil and dispersant, on a rather large scale. We spotted a small pod of dolphins right about a mile from the Racoon area, but after that … nada. I’ve flown over the Gulf before and been out in boats, and I was very spooked at the overall absence of dolphins.
As we progressed, the oil became more and more apparent in different forms and textures. It was like Baskin Robbins 32 flavors of Hell …
* I don’t know how many of you caught this piece of news over the weekend but a Deepwater Horizon chief engineer revealed to federal investigators that fire and gas alarms aboard the rig had been disabled for at least a year “because the rig’s leaders didn’t want to wake up to false alarms.” Having spent several nights onboard another Transocean drilling vessel, this makes me feel all kinds of lucky and freaked out. Safety culture, you betcha.
* JoeJoeJoe pointed me to this NatGeo article with a photo gallery which explains how “UV light could help cleanup crews pinpoint hard-to-see oil that might then be treated with oil-eating bacteria.” A neat idea, but too many times have we started yet another environmental disaster to combat a previous one. I suggest that we dig trenches on beaches that have supposedly already been cleaned up and shine the UV light in there.
* Remember, BP’s expenses from the cleanup are tax-deductible.
“I don’t know how many of you caught this piece of news over the weekend but a Deepwater Horizon chief engineer revealed to federal investigators that fire and gas alarms aboard the rig had been disabled for at least a year”
When I saw this on Friday afternoon, I was reminded of the episode of The West Wing in which a character explained that the Friday news cycle was called “Take out the trash day” and used to quickly dispose of inconvenient news items.
I’m reading The Spill, which is all about the Exxon Valdez spill as seen through the eyes of most everyone involved, and the Exxon guys said of the fertilizer they got from France that it took care of the oil on the beaches. What the EPA folks and the locals found, however, is that the particular fertilizer that was used took the oil off the tops of the rocks and simply deposited it under the rocks. It was also just as toxic as the Corexit that was tested on the oil in Prince William Sound.
Yes, I’m reading the book in small bursts. I get too ticked if I read it all at once. The same damn mistakes are being made, only in ’89, Alaskans from the governor on down to the fishermen and residents said, “To hell with Exxon and Alyeska, we’re going out there and putting it in 5-gallon buckets if we have to.” Whatever BP seems to be dishing out, Louisiana’s officials seem only too happy to take it, with only a touch of bombast for show.
How does fertilizer “take oil off the tops of the rocks and simply deposited it under the rocks?” I’d be interested to hear if the book elaborates on that mechanism.
It’s so glaringly apparent that even Florida’s conservative leadership is taking BP and the government’s bullshit to task, while Louisiana will do nothing to piss of the hands that simultaneously feeds and smacks it around.
“It later was discovered that Inipol (the French “fertilizer”) was actually an alcohol cleaner that would immediately dissolve the oil and carry it off the tops of the rocks and deposit it underneath, out of sight.” – Joe Bridgman, public info. officer, Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation
‘Twasn’t a fertilizer at all is the answer.
Urrrgh. Angry angry angry…