http://pdf.keysnews.com/frontpage.pdf

Spinning water had kept oil west of Florida Keys

by Tim O’Hara

An eddy that was keeping oil from heading toward the Florida Keys has reconnected with the Loop Current, which could send it toward the Dry Tortugas, government and private university oceanographers said Thursday. Two monitor floats dropped in the Gulf of Mexico traveled clockwise through the spinning eddy, but then entered the Loop Current and now are heading toward Naples, according to the Ocean Circulation Group’s model.

Oceanographer Robert Weisberg speculated they eventually could connect with the Florida Current, which now is running about 40 to 60 miles off the Keys through the Florida Straits, according to Erik Stabenau, an oceanographer working with the government’s Joint Incident Command in Miami.

Stabenau confirmed the eddy is reattaching to the Loop Current, but could not say how much water and possibly oil was being transferred. The Loop Current could send oil sheen and tar balls to the Keys, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Thursday said such menaces still were several hundred miles away from the Tortugas and Keys. There were no plans Thursday to ban fishing in any areas near the Tortugas, National Marine Fisheries Service spokeswoman Kim Amendola said.

 

http://www.cwn-se.org/

Dear friends of Florida waters:

It’s Friday afternoon and I hope that all of you will get to take at least some of the weekend off to enjoy Florida’s waters.  Here in the panhandle, we have had a fairly good week.  The oil came into Perdido Pass a few days ago, from Alabama waters into Florida waters, which was completely unnecessary, but hopefully it is getting cleaned up and I hear that our local governments (Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties) have given the state notice that they are no longer waiting for the state to protect their shorelines. This is very wise of them, as the state is basically doing nothing substantial to protect Florida’s offshore or inland waters.  That part is very discouraging.

I have attached an op-ed that I wrote this morning after watching Gov. Crist on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program.  As you will see if you read it, my heart is on my sleeve, but where else should I keep it right now.  It will not be silent.  I’ve sent the op-ed out to the papers and posted it on our three Facebook pages as well as our Clean Water Network of FL website. Also, several organizations have asked me to write for their blogs, so it will go to them as well.  Feel free to share it with your members and/or friends if you think it is worthy of further distribution.

On Monday I’ll meet with the local County Commission chairman to discuss our tool kit and greater collaboration.  We are told that the large patches of oil are slowly drifting toward us, but so far we are mostly having the oil patties that I reported a few days ago.  The BP contractors are keeping the beach in front of my house spotlessly clean, but I am told that their efforts are less consistent in other places.

Please go to the www.cleanwaternetwork-fl.org website and see the two new action alerts to Gov. Crist and DEP Secretary Mike Sole.  If you have a minute to send them off, it would be very helpful.  Alternatively you can send you own message.  The important thing is that they need to hear from everyone.  The Atty Gen McCullum announced that he is asking BP for $2.5 billion for Florida.  This is a step in the right direction and we are glad to see it, even though it is extremely late.  A non-government member of a new committee on the oil spill, suggested this and amazingly, the AG took some action.

We are learning a lot more about the WRSCompass Corp. which DEP awarded a no-bid contract to.  We will post this info on our websites, so keep an eye out for it soon. 

Please enjoy your weekend and join me in feeling fortunate that the oil has not moved any closer to our state than it has.  The death toll on the marine life however is mounting and I know that you share my heartache over that.  We will get through this and hopefully some better public policy will result sooner rather than later.

For all of Florida’s waters,

Linda Young
Director

Op-Ed:

WE ARE NOW PAYING THE TRUE COST OF COMPROMISE

 

As director of a statewide environmental organization that works to keep our beaches clean and safe and the founder of Gulf Coast Environmental Defense, a panhandle group opposed to opening the eastern Gulf of Mexico to new drilling, I have spent the past 23 years working to avoid the nightmare that is now unfolding all around me.

Watching Morning Joe on MSNBC this morning, I listened to Governor Crist say that our beaches and shorelines are the best booms that we have to catch the sticky, toxic oil that is slowly creeping into Florida.  The same statement was attributed to his Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Mike Sole in a Gannett newspaper last weekend.  I admit that even after 23 years of dealing with bureaucrats who care little about our waters, I was horrified to hear our governor say these words. 

Since 1993, Florida has been in a steady downward slide in search of the bottom rung on the ladder of environmental protection.  We may have finally arrived with our pathetic response to the life-sucking disaster that encroaches deeper by the moment into our state waters.  Years of environmental compromise for the sake of political expediency have incrementally desensitized our sunshine and blue-water culture.  The media, local governments and many business owners have quietly watched, sometimes given a nod and even when necessary cheered in unison with the polluters as they have systematically dismantled our environmental safeguards.  Today, we are witnessing an environmentally dysfunctional and detached state bureaucracy that can do little more than make excuses to the public out of one side of their mouths, while they quickly secure cushy contracts for their polluter-connected political buddies.  Meanwhile, dead turtles, dolphins, pelicans and fish take their last oily breaths and slowly drift through the endless sea of despair.

No, this is not a cheery synopsis.  I’m not here to beg anyone to come to the beach where I live and grew up, in order to help the local economy.  I’m here to say the same thing I said last month in May, standing before the Florida DEP and the Environmental Regulation Commission (ERC) in Tallahassee. We must stop using the Gulf of Mexico as a political bargaining chit.

DEP was there to seek final permission from the ERC to weaken water quality standards, in order to accommodate a deliberate 50 million gallon-per-day toxic discharge into the Gulf of Mexico.  The new estimates of the amount of oil coming from BP’s blow-out disaster come to 20,000 to 40,000 barrels per day, which could mean just under 2 million gallons per day.  Multiply that worse case scenario by 25 and that is what DEP thinks we should accept into the Big Bend Aquatic Seagrass Preserve, an important fishery, from the Buckeye pulp mill.  While crude oil pours from BP’s destroyed rig, Buckeye wants permission to dump industrial waste that is also chronically toxic and loaded with sludge, oils and grease, dioxin, and a whole host of life-destroying pollutants.

How did we arrive on the shores of America’s playground, where our Governor characterizes our beaches as the perfect oil-booms and our environmental regulators legitimize mass destruction of important near-shore fisheries?  If this is the death of common sense and decency, then it came by way of a thousand cuts.  We the people, the voters, the taxpayers of Florida elect these self-serving politicians who allow their polluter friends to externalize the cost of containing their waste.  It is passed on to us, and some days we barely notice the debt that is accruing in our names.  But one morning we wake up and the piper is at the door, demanding payment for our acquiescence. 

Governor Crist, Attorney General McCollum, DEP Secretary Mike Sole and others that should be trustworthy have handed over important responsibilities for protecting Florida’s shores to a handful of BP and oil industry cronies.  Jim Smith, a former BP lobbyist, is leading our legal team.  Our counties are being directed to adopt oil-protection plans developed by WRSCompass, a company whose CEO is the former chief-of-staff to Dick Cheney (formerly with Halliburton).  WRSCompass, according to the Destin Log newspaper, is helping BP get charter boats under contract and has worked for BP in previous years.  WRSCompass even earned BP’s Diamond Safety Award.  I can only wonder how it is possible to win a safety award from BP.

The citizens of Florida should not accept another day of political expediency, externalized costs or fluffy protection from our state officials.  We are not helpless turtles that are forced to gulp oil into our lungs and sink to the bottom.  Our leaders may be focused on the bottom rung of environmental protection, but we do not have to go there with them.  Now is the time to say no.  The cost of complacency is too high and we will no longer pay your piper!

Linda Young is the Director of the Clean Water Network of Florida, a coalition of more than 300 groups that are committed to full implementation, enforcement and strengthening of the Clean Water Act and other safeguards of our water resources.

 (06/10/2010)

 Some journalists trying to assess the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on wildlife and the environment have been turned away from public areas by BP PLC, cleanup contractors, local law enforcement officials and the Coast Guard, prompting concerns that officials are trying to filter the images that are ultimately seen by the public.

“I think they’ve been trying to limit access,” Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said. “It is a company that was not used to transparency. It was not used to having public scrutiny of what it did.”

The Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration denied an ordinary permit to Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc. after the company said a staffer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans would be shooting photographs from the plane. Reporters from the New York Daily News were told by a local sheriff in Grand Isle, La., that they needed to fill out paperwork and be accompanied by a BP employee if they wanted to visit an oil-soaked beach.

An FAA spokeswoman said flight restrictions are necessary to prevent civilian aircraft from interfering with those being used in the oil spill response. The agency has revised its policy to allow news media flights after case-by-case review.

“Our general approach throughout this response, which is controlled by the Unified Command and is the largest ever to an oil spill,” BP spokesman David Nicholas said, “has been to allow as much access as possible to media and other parties without compromising the work we are engaged on or the safety of those to whom we give access.”

Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor at the Associated Press, compared the situation to that of embedded journalists in Afghanistan.

“There is a continued effort to keep control over the access,” Oreskes said. “And even in places where the government is cooperating with us to provide access, it’s still a problem because it’s still access obtained through the government” (Jeremy Peters, New York Times, June 9). —

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/jun/10/hands-across-sand-protect-florida-coast-oil-spill/

The National Hands Across the Sand movement, which says “no” to oil and “yes” to renewable energy, will form a line on the beach by holding hands beginning at noon on Saturday, June 26. Candy Strafford welcomes all ages to join her as early as 11 a.m. near the Vanderbilt Beach Access located at the end Vanderbilt Beach Road, just west of the Ritz- Carlton Beach Resort. Get more information at (facebook.com/handsacrossthesand)
Event Details
        *       What: Hands Across the Sand
     *       When: Saturday, June 26, 2010, 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
    *       Where: Naples Beach
     *       Cost: Not available
     *       Age limit: All ages
Full event details »
IF YOU GO
Vanderbilt Beach Parking Garage
Parking sticker required, or $8 parking fee; meters also available
100 Vanderbilt Beach Road, North Naples
Questions: 252-4000

For other locations, see Hands Across the Sand website: www.handsacrossthesand.com

Candy Strafford wants people to lend a hand to her – all in the name of protecting local beaches from off-shore oil drilling.

The Golden Gate Estates resident is a mother, and a grandmother, first and foremost. But she is now a pioneer in illustrating what peaceful environmental preservation is all about. Just using her one hand to reach out to others, as part of the National Hands Across the Sand movement, which says “no” to oil and “yes” to renewable energy.
Strafford, together with other Collier County residents, will form a line on the beach by holding hands beginning at noon on Saturday, June 26. Strafford welcomes all ages to join her as early as 11 a.m. near the Vanderbilt Beach Access located at the end Vanderbilt Beach Road, just west of the Ritz- Carlton Beach Resort.
Strafford is one of many community leaders spearheading an effort to reach out to thousands of local residents. She is asking all Floridians to take her up on the cause as part of the Hands Across the Sand movement, which originally started In Florida on Feb. 13 with a hand-holding chain of 10,000 people on nearly 100 beaches along the coastline.

“The message is simple. The images are powerful. We are drawing a line in the sand against offshore oil drilling along America’s beaches and in solidarity events across this great land,” the movement’s founder, Dave Rauschkolb, said.

Strafford agrees with Rauschkolb, and wants everyone to come together for the protection of pristine beaches in Naples, and beaches all over Florida.

“Because it is a national event, I was thinking it would be great to do it with my daughter and granddaughter,” said Strafford, as she strolls Vanderbilt Beach on a sunny morning with her 2-year-old granddaughter, Amaya, and her family, who is visiting Naples from England.

Those who cannot participate can take up their own “inland” cause by visiting handsacrossthesand.com, where they can check out the Hands Across the Sand interactive map to locate a beach nearby to link up.

“It’s so important for our future, and I became involved in the Hands Across the Beach’s movement just a short time ago,” said Strafford, who believes in promoting clean “green” renewable energy, and invites Naples, Marco Island and Bonita Springs residents to unite with her cause.

“This isn’t a protest, but it’s a gathering,” Strafford said, emphasizing the Hands Across the Sand movement as a community assembly, one without any political separations or age limits.
___________
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/06/president_obama_may_have_put.html
Washington Post
June 10, 2010
Environmentalists plan offshore oil drilling protest on Virginia beaches

President Obama may have put an end to Virginia’s immediate offshore drilling plans, but that hasn’t stopped environmentalists from protesting any future possibility.

On June 26, activists will join hands on Virginia’s beaches to show their opposition to drilling on what is being dubbed as a National Day of Action. The event follows a similar one in Florida where 10,000 people locked hands on more than 80 beaches.
(Purell, anyone?)

“A spill or accident off the coast of Virginia, even at a fraction of the size of the Gulf Coast spill, would devastate our economy and our environment,” said Ari Lawrence, chair of the Virginia Beach Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, one of the groups organizing the event. “The only option is to put an immediate stop to drilling off our coasts and seek sustainable energy solutions that do not pose such a significant threat to our future or the livelihoods of the American people.”

Earlier today, Virginia’s senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, urged federal authorities to coordinate with emergency preparedness officials with coastal states in the event that the oil spill reaches the Atlantic Coast. Several experts have indicated that it is possible that the oil could reach the Gulf Stream and be carried up the Atlantic coast to Virginia, they said.

Webb and Warner were joined on the letter by 20 other senators, including Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin of Maryland.

By Anita Kumar  |  June 10, 2010; 2:34 PM ET

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://ocean.si.edu/blog/invisible-loss-impacts-oil-you-do-not-see/

This is exactly what has been bothering me the most about the fact that MOST of the oil never makes it to the surface; we are destroying the very web of life in the Gulf of Mexico.  DV

Wed, 06/09/2010 – 9:23am — Chris Mah

Since late April, the world has watched a devastating oil spill from a BP drilling rig spread throughout the Gulf of Mexico and become one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of the United States.

CREDIT:   Dr. Allison J. Gong, UC Santa Cruz

We have all seen some of the impacts on large animals: birds, turtles, dolphins, and fishes have all been shown covered in oil with clogged gills, feathers and fins. Undoubtedly, the imagery of these familiar and normally photogenic animals is a powerful, heartbreaking reminder of the damage being done in the Gulf.

But, the effect of the oil on those organisms we do not see may be even more important.

I refer to the invertebrates—animals such as shrimp, crabs, sea stars, sea urchins, clams, snails, and worms, which lack backbones (or vertebrae). These species may not make the headlines as often as larger animals, but they are critically important to the ecosystem in the Gulf. In 1993, Dr. Thomas Suchanek, a researcher at the University or California, Davis published a scientific paper summarizing the effects of oil on invertebrate communities. The paper notes that very low concentrations of oil can produce dramatic changes in invertebrate populations.

Why is this important? Invertebrates comprise the majority of animals in the marine ecosystem. They include jellyfish that live throughout the water column (and are food for turtles and fish); sea stars, which live on the sea bottom; and more importantly the many clams, crabs, shrimps and other commercially important species that are fished in the Gulf. Oil, not to mention the more toxic dispersants being used in the clean-up, can have a wide range of harmful effects, including changes to reproduction, growth, feeding, movement, behavior, and breathing. Destruction of these animals will substantially change the food webs and interrelationships among the organisms that live in the Gulf.

We immediately think about the damage affecting adult animals, but in fact, the more severe damage may be done to those animals we can’t even see—the larvae (baby forms) that live among the plankton.

Seawater is full of plankton—tiny organisms that drift on the currents. Many of these organisms are larvae, or immature animals, mostly invertebrates that grow up to become those jellyfish, crabs, and clams. In many ways, the tiny forms of these animals are the most vulnerable, which is why there are so many of them. In nature, no predator would be able to devour them all, so eventually a significant fraction of those animals grow up into adults. But what happens when you poison the environment where they live? Massive swaths of ocean containing these organisms will likely be obliterated. Some reports are already talking about “dead zones” that could affect species in the Gulf for years to come.

The ecological effects will be even more long lasting. As with the adults, these larvae are part of complex food webs and can play important direct and indirect roles in ecosystems.

The domino effect of wiping out those adults will be devastating not only to the ecology but to the economy. For example, what happens to the shrimp fishery when not only all the adults are poisoned, but the larval forms are wiped out or significantly weakened? The same question applies to almost any edible marine animal in the Gulf of Mexico.

The scope of the damage is sad even if we only see images of poisoned pelicans and other large vertebrates, but what we do not see that may be the most widespread and devastating legacies of the Gulf oil spill.

Editor’s Note: Our guest blogger, Dr. Chris Mah, is an expert in the evolution and biology of sea stars. He works in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and regularly shares his studies and adventures on the Echinoblog.

Special thanks to Erika Biddle