As you all know, and some of you may have already forgotten, the biggest marine oil spill in world history gushed freely in the Gulf of Mexico over the summer of 2010 for 87 days. The Deepwater Horizon Oil Well Explosion and following leak was both deadly and devastating, killing 11 initially in the explosion and 2 more in the cleanup effort. Countless species of birds, mammals, and fish died in this disaster; more than we’ll ever know. The economic, psychological, emotional, and environmental damage to the Gulf Region was arguably as bad, or worse, than it was from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Since nobody really knows the extent of the damage the oil will do long term, or how much oil is really still hidden in the depths of the ocean a mile or more deep, the end result of this catastrophe has yet to be determined.
I watched the entire sequence of events unfold on TV just like most people in the world who don’t live close enough to experience it firsthand. In a day and age where we are so desensitized from the bombardment of news and media sources it’s hard to really think of this as more than a news headline, unless you are affected by it personally. Sure everyone was mad about it, but what could anyone besides BP really do to fix it- nothing. So everyone went into bystander mode including the government. Watching, waiting, worrying, wondering, when will it end. Nobody wanted to get too attached to the issue emotionally because nobody could do anything to solve the problem except BP. Only BP had the equipment to fix the problem. Possibly other oil companies could have helped, but it was too convenient for them to watch their competitor drown in oil, along with the Gulf Region.
Now the bleeding has stopped, and the only people that will be affected by this long term are the residents that live on the Gulf Coast, or people brave enough to eat the government certified safe Gulf Seafood. Nearly as fast as the oil spill stopped, the news stories stopped flowing too. There were three other oil spills this summer (one in Michigan, one on land in Louisiana, and another one off the shores of Louisiana), but they barely registered a blip in the news, or were covered up quickly. It’s amazing how easily people can forget about an event so horrific, and move on talking about the next big story. Personally I’m disgusted by the whole thing, so when I had a chance to visit Florida this summer in late July and early August I knew that I had to tour the region to get my own impression, and then write something about it.
By the time I got to Florida the BP Oil Well was finally capped and testing was in place to finalize the seal on the cap. The current headline was all about if the cap would hold, what tropical storms were heading to the region, and what fishing areas had been reopened. My first stop was Siesta Key Beach south of Tampa. The oil spill never really reached this far south, at least not visibly. The water was brilliantly green and the sand white as can be. The beach was packed, and everything seemed to be business as usual.
The second best beach in the country-according to Travel Channel
A week later in early August I started my tour of the Florida Panhandle area that was affected by the oil spill. First stop was St George Island State park near Apalachicola FL. On the drive down there from Tallahassee I saw a few BP gas stations with tarps covering the BP signs. Apparently some BP stations have already started changing business names because nobody will buy gas from them. At the beach the water was the normal green color, but had streaks of brown in it. People were fishing and swimming as if nothing had happened.
The BP name ain't what it used to be.
Surf Fishing in the Gulf at St. George Beach
You might be a redneck, if you pitch a tent at the beach
A few days later I left for Texas and decided to make a driving tour of the Gulf Coast on the way. The first stop was in Panama City which was very deserted for this time of year. The panhandle beaches (also known as The Redneck Riviera) typically have their high season in the summer, unlike the rest of Florida. I walked out onto the Panama City Pier to see if I could figure out why the water had even more brown streaks in it than St George Island. The park ranger said that the water turned brown every summer when the algae bloomed during hot weather; it was indeed HOT. However I’ve never heard of this or seen it myself in the 16 years that I lived in Florida, or on the many visits I’ve had since. Although I did grow up on the southeast coast I have visited the Gulf Coast and the panhandle on numerous occasions.
To quote Diamond Dave- Panama, Uh Oh Oh Oh Ohhh
Does that look like normal algae to you?
More fishing off Panama Pier
Driving west my next stop was just east of Destin at Miramar Beach where signs were posted warning people that the beaches in this area had been affected by the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill. I found tar on the beach and trash barrels labeled oil (which ironically look like oil barrels) to put this in. Surprisingly people were still swimming and fishing as if nothing had ever happened. The water was even browner than Panama City. On the radio I heard a commercial sponsored by BP. The content was as you would expect, the usual propaganda about how BP cares and is working hard to clean the waters etc, and then I heard this- although you may find dead fish washed up on the beaches this is a normal result of the algae bloom that happens every year along the Gulf coast. Really???
Oil affected beach- hey let's go swimming!
Who cares if there's oil in the water, lets party like its 2009!
On the lookout for oil and dead wildlife
The next stop was Gulf Islands National Seashore near Pensacola Florida. Just a few weeks ago the Florida Governor Charlie Christ was seen on the news walking along this beach area surveying the puddles of oil spilled all over the famous white sand beaches Pensacola is known for. Driving along I saw several cleanup sites full of generically marked buses that looked like modified tour buses used to transport the oil cleanup crew to and from the beaches. There were police cars blocking access to the normally public areas, and crime scene looking tape blocking access to the parking and beach areas where workers were. Everything was very secretive and BP seemed to be in full cover-up mode. I had the feeling that if I crossed the line to the cleanup area I might be shot on site. It was that kind of operation, and this was happening in several areas starting around Destin and heading west. I left the coast and hit I-10 for my next stop Biloxi Mississippi, which still had temps in 90’s and near 100% humidity when I arrived near midnight. When I stepped out of the car my glasses fogged up and I nearly fainted from the heat. Blah!
Green flag or not, I wouldn't swim in that!
Tar/oil on the beach
No public access, anymore..
I’ve driven through Mississippi many times but to date my only memorable experience here was witnessing a fight at a local gas station somewhere around Jackson. A Charlie Daniels song Uneasy Rider comes to mind. This time I drove across the Gulf Coast on US90 which is similar to Florida’s coastal A1A. I stopped at several beaches from Biloxi to Gulfport and beyond. The water seemed to be a constant brown sewer color with a similar smell to go with it. There were several drainage pipes or culverts pouring straight into the gulf along various beaches, which were adding who knows what to the already oil infested waters. Dead fish were washed up all over the beach. Big industry factories were looming in the distance along the coast spewing out pollution of their own. Although the beaches were pretty much empty there were still a few hardy souls fishing and swimming in this water, which looked like it could be straight from an overflowed toilet. I struggled to keep my lunch down, and decided that I had seen enough.
Biloxi- Is that oil sheen in the water from the boats or the spill?
Dead fish and unknown substance on the beach in Gulfport
The lovely waters of Gulfport
Although I only saw the aftermath of this disaster it did put some things in perspective for me.
1. I realized it doesn’t matter how bad the environment is. Some people just don’t care, don’t pay attention, and won’t change their normal routine and habits to make a difference. Not even if that difference is for their own good.
2. My Mom reminded me that when my sister and I were kids we would always get tar on our feet at the beaches and have to use baby oil to get it off. As far as I know tar only comes from oil, although some oil leaks are naturally occurring. In any case there doesn’t seem to be much tar on the east coast of Florida anymore so its likely oil spills weren’t regulated or reported as much back in the old days.
3. The fishing industry is alive and well on the Gulf Coast. The recently closed fishing waters are quickly being reopened in order to get life and economics back to normal for Gulf Coast residents. Even as new studies are finding oil and dispersant residue in local seafood like crab larvae all along the gulf coast, locals are eating it anyway to show support for the fishing industry. If the government says its ok, then it must be, right? Not really.
4. The total oil spill was estimated to be 4.9 million barrels or 205 million gallons of oil; spelled out that’s 205,000,000 gallons! So basically if 2 out of every 3 people in the United States were to pour a gallon of oil into the gulf that would about equal the spill.
5. About a month after the oil well is capped it’s difficult to find any news on this catastrophe. The effects will be felt for years to come, but it seems everyone is so eager to move on and forget. The big money of BP in combination with the government cover-up machine has pretty much brushed this under the rug. Most people who don’t live in the Gulf Region have already forgotten about the Great Oil Kill and are now focused on what Mississippi’s favorite son Brett Favre will do this season.
6. BP has signs posted all over the Gulf region asking people to report oil and dead wildlife if you see it. I wonder if the dead wildlife is really counted or quietly discarded? We will never know for sure how many casualties this disaster claimed, nor how many future generations of wildlife will be affected by the new dead zones created in the Gulf from the oil and dispersant.
7. The number of dead birds, fish, and mammals that were washed up on the Gulf Shores was listed in the thousands, because that is all we could see washed up on the shores. This is conveniently inaccurate for BP and the public conscience. The reality is the oil spill affected an area much larger than the Gulf Coastline you saw on the news. Let’s just say hypothetically the spill affected an area the size of the state of Louisiana, which is probably not far off. Now if you counted the causalities only along the state’s shoreline, that would be a gross underestimate considering you covered a couple hundred miles (not even square miles), when the entire state is made up of roughly 58,000 square miles. Now imagine that the state is made up of water that is up to a mile deep in some areas, so you had to cover not only the area but the entire volume of its depth. It’s unfathomable!
8. Money seems to fix everything, for now. BP has deep pockets. Case in point- former BP CEO Tony Hayward gets an 18 million dollar golden parachute so he can “get his life back”. BP probably makes more profit annually than some small countries. With all that money they have millions to spend on propaganda, cover-up, and cleanup. 50 million alone went to advertisements saying we’re sorry, we care, and we’ll fix the problem. 50 million that could have gone to new energy technology research so we can get off oil.
9. If BP really cared about the environment they wouldn’t have sprayed 2 million gallons of toxic dispersants into the gulf after the EPA ordered them not to. In an effort to make the oil disappear they did it anyway. Unfortunately the dispersant doesn’t really make the oil disappear; it just spreads it out, along with the toxic dispersant. But as far as BP is concerned what you can’t see won’t hurt you, or at least it won’t hurt their image.
10. BP will likely divide itself up into smaller companies like other major companies with a bad reputation have. In the meantime if you want to boycott BP these brands also use BP oil- ARCO, AM/PM, Aral, and Castrol oil. I’m sure there are many others but it’s hard to find that information on the internet, just like it’s hard to find any current news about the oil spill. It all seemed to mysteriously vanish just like the oil.
11. Irony is cruel. This disaster did happen off the shores of the country that historically has been the number one consumer of oil products- U.S.A. Recently that top spot has been overtaken by the Chinese who have a population about 4 times the size of the U.S. What happens as China continues to grow and other populous countries on the rise such as India follow? We may be able to develop our own alternative fuels to become energy independent, like Brazil did decades ago after the 70’s oil crisis, but how long will it take for these new up and coming nations to follow that lead. If they are as slow as us it will take decades.
Now that the oil can’t be seen on the water surface or beaches where is it? Suddenly a great convenient theory about oil eating bacteria appears and all is well. If this is true don’t the bacteria defecate like every other living thing on earth, and wouldn’t that waste still contain the oil in some form? Where is the oil, and what form has it taken? Has it dispersed so much that it’s just mixed up with the water in trace levels so that whatever effects it may have down the road can never be traced back to the oil spill? There are lots of questions and proposed answers to all of this, but trying to find the truth in it all is like trying to mix oil and water. Meanwhile the residents of the Gulf Coast will be left behind and forgotten, once again.
A picture is worth a thousand words
Below is a small album of some more pictures from my trip. I’m still working out the details of the slideshow plugin so you have to click on it and then scroll back down to it. The issue should be fixed soon. If you want to see a more detailed and dramatic photo time-line of the oil disaster visit this Newsweek Photolog.
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