1st thoughts on my oil spill visit

I’m an environmental scientist and author that works for a private company that produces natural biological products for the bioremediation of crude oil among other things. I have worked in environmental cleanup for over twenty years in locations all over the world. We were invited to send our products to one of the parishes in Louisiana to carry out a test of its effectiveness in cleaning up oil damaged beaches and wetlands. The opportunity to visit the oil spill area was a life changing experience.

We were struck by the overwhelming beauty of the Louisiana wetlands. They are vast. We drove for hours through a diverse habitat of grass and water that supports huge populations of fish, crustaceans, shellfish, and all of the other organisms that make this area of the world an environmental treasure to be protected. A living treasure house that nourishes a rich culture of hardworking people that make their living from the sea and that fills our grocery stores and restaurants with a sustainable bounty of seafood.

Or it used to.

I can tell you we didn’t see a single walrus, sea otter or sea lion in Louisiana. There might have been some at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, but we didn’t make it there. Those animals were listed in the BP spill response plan for the Gulf as “sensitive biological resources” even though they are not found in the Gulf. That shows you how much they care about the wildlife of the Gulf of Mexico. But maybe they were planning for an even bigger spill that would reach all the way to the Arctic. Who knows, with the success they’ve had in plugging the leak, the oil may make it to the North Pole before the year is out.

Now that’s planning ahead.

The fear and anger of the local people toward BP can be felt in any conversation that you have with them. We heard over and over, “BP is calling the shots, we’re helpless to do anything.” In the words of one local woman working in a restaurant, “We don’t know what we’re going to do. All we know is fishing and shrimping. If we can’t do that, what will we do?” For the fishermen, shrimpers and oystermen, a way of life they have known for generations may be lost forever. BP’s response has been to pay them not to fish or to hire them to run boom boats and skimmers.

The extent that BP controls all aspects of the spill on land is terrifying. I attempted to get samples of the oil for research purposes in Grand Isle and was stopped by police. When I went to the Port Authority of Port Fourchon to get permission to enter the spill area I was told that permission would have to come from BP. The duly appointed law enforcement of the region was apparently powerless to give us access. To quote law enforcement, “BP controls access to the spill—we can’t let you go in without their approval.” A foreign corporation has taken control of part of America…one of America’s most fragile, beautiful and productive regions. Think about that.

The U.S. military is everywhere; Humvees, and Amphibious vehicles. We even saw a Stryker armored personnel carrier. We felt like we were in a wetland version of Iraq. An enormous amount of our taxpayer money is being spent on this military presence.
Our armed forces are apparently there to support BP’s security effort to control access to the spill; so much for the administration’s claim that they are in control of the spill. It is BP’s show 100% except for the Coast Guard skimming and boom setting operations. All the clean up we saw was from private contractors running bulldozers and other equipment scraping up contaminated sand or positioning booms.

Have you gotten tired of hearing, “It’s never been done in 5000 feet of water.” during the repeated failed efforts to stop the leak? Maybe that means we shouldn’t use a technology until we know we can take care of the consequences of its failure. What do you think?

I have to say a boycott is not enough. We must reduce our demand for petroleum based hydrocarbons through the use of electric cars and trains and alternative sustainable technologies. We need to DEMAND that our government begin work immediately on a nationwide network of high speed electric trains to replace aircraft, auto and truck transport. We need a Manhattan Project for trains and electric cars. We need to change our lifestyles to emphasize sustainable technologies that minimize the use of oil based hydrocarbons. Only when we do that will the victory finally be won.

Killing a whale shark

Killing a gentle giant for food. I think I don't I need to add any commentary.

		Mon, Aug 24, 2009 AsiaOne
Whale shark caught and hacked into pieces in Johor
A quiet lunch affair at a seafood restaurant turned awry and bloody when a whale shark, size of a pick-up truck, was hauled onto the jetty and hacked into pieces. A Singaporean eye-witness who was having his meal at the restaurant, south of Johor, Malaysia, at that time wrote this account: "I was there having lunch with some friends at a seafood restaurant when a local walked in and told the boss that a big shark was caught. "I did not give much thought to it until the workers who went there to see came back and told their fellow colleagues that the shark was as big as a pick-up. "This caught my attention. We paid for our meal and went over to the jetty to have a look. "When we reached the jetty, it was already quite crowded. I managed to squeeze in some photos as the poor shark was being sliced by a hack saw. Click on thumbnail to view (Photos: STOMP) According to the eye-witness, the catch could have been the joint efforts of three fishing boats which had brought the big fish in from the South China Sea, as he had overheard conversations from the crowd. "As you can see, the shark was being chopped up, did not stay long to watch as we had to catch our ferry. "Seeing the poor guy being chopped up, I was quite sad. "What you see in picture is very different from the actual situation. There was the noise from the hack saw, blood flowing out etc."

Thoughts on the Sturgeon

Reading "The Philosopher Fish" by Richard Adams Carey and was struck once again by how much we have lost through our over exploitation of the natural world. The waters of North America and Europe once teemed with gigantic sturgeon, fish up to 15 meters and 2000 kilograms in size. Famous today as a source for caviar, they were so plentiful in North America they were sold as food for slaves and the poor. (Lobsters were once this plentiful too!). At one time caviar was so cheap in the United States that it was put out for free in bars in New York much like they do peanuts today. Creatures of the coastal waters, rivers and lakes, they were fished so extensively that now most species are now endangered or threatened. All that remains of this abundance are fragmented remnant populations. This from a fish that has lived on this planet for 200,000,000 years. When people tell me we live in such exciting times with our hellbent lust for technological progress--I tell them I would have liked to have seen a river in the U.S. teeming with fish 10 feet long. A world where the abundance of lobsters and cod boggled the mind. What kind of sailfish were there in those days? Those were exciting times--now gone and forgotten.