BY TIMOTHY O’HARA Citizen Staff
tohara@keysnews.com

The two vessels will run along paths north of the Tortugas in search of any weathered oil products such as light sheen or tar balls that potentially could threaten the Keys, and ultimately Florida’s east coast. They will be fitted with “Neuston nets,” large and relatively long nets used for sampling substantial volumes of water, said Joint Incident Command spokeswoman Diana Friedhoff-Miller.

The monitoring efforts are intended to provide a minimum of 48 hours’ notice so responders can maximize preparedness and response activities and notify the public, the Joint Incident Command said in a prepared statement.

One of the vessels will start looking 30 miles northwest of the Tortugas and the other will start 54 miles northwest of the seven-island chain. One of the vessels already is patrolling an area off the Tortugas, and the other is slated to leave Robbie’s Marina on Stock Island today. The patrols will run from four to 10 days, Friedhoff-Miller said.

Additional vessels and aircraft patrols may be implemented as necessary to provide early warning detection of any weathered oil products, officials said.

Some oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill has made its way to the Loop Current, which loops north from the Gulf Stream into the Gulf of Mexico, then down Florida’s west coast and through the Florida Straits.

While National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projection maps show a clockwise spinning eddy has broken off the Loop Current and appears to be keeping oil sheens and tar balls away from the Keys, a University of South Florida computer model and satellite images show two small, but separate, patches of oil were in the Florida Straits south of Key West on Sunday.

The areas to be patrolled include a section off the Tortugas that the National Marine Fisheries Service briefly closed to fishing last week due to concerns of oil contamination.

The fishing was shut down for roughly 24 hours before the ban was lifted. 

SITUATION REPORT

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the oil plume on Monday was less than five miles from Pensacola and 260 miles from St. Petersburg, with non-contiguous sheens and scattered tar balls closer. Southwest winds pushed sheen and tar balls toward the western Panhandle, with confirmed cases from Escambia to Walton counties.

June 7, 2010

Dear friends of Florida waters: 

I just want to give you an update on the spill.  First of all thank you again for your emails, letters and phone calls on the oil disaster to the state officials.  It is making a difference.  I have received so many follow-up emails from you, with the outstanding contacts that you have made through your groups, communities and friends.  I am amazed by how far and wide we reach.  We have seen Governor Crist finally start asking for more money from BP, first an additional $50 million last week and then another $100 million was requested over the weekend.  I’m not sure how that money will be allocated if the state receives it, but I do know that our local governments are begging for equipment and resources to clean up the oil and they are not getting cooperation from BP.  The state is still not taking the type of proactive steps to protect our shores that the Clean Water Network of FL and our local governments expect to be taken.  So please continue to forward any and all information that you receive from me, to your local government, state officials and other helpful contacts that may be in a position to help.

Before I go any further, I want to give you a bit of good news.  I just finished an hour long TV interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp about the spill.  The reporter shared with me that in two days there will be a big event in Mobile, Alabama where the Canadian Ambassador to the US will officially present a bunch of off-shore boom to the US.  Apparently this is not the pathetic little boom that BP and the state are using, which is designed to be used around construction sites and not in the Gulf of Mexico or in open waters (it’s too small for that). This is real boom that the Canadian government keeps on hand in case there’s a spill.  Hmmmm . . . Now there’s a novel idea.

I encourage you to watch the internet for news stories, as well as our facebook pages for Clean Water Network of FL and Florida Clean Water Network.  Also our website (address below) which I have been updating less frequently, but it has our citizens’ tool kit and other news.  I can also send you the full toolkit by email it you need for me to. 

You have probably seen Admiral Thad Allen on TV, telling us that this is going to continue being an issue for the rest of this year.  Excuse me, Admiral but this is going to be an issue for years and we at the Clean Water Network of FL and our partners are trying to think long-term as well as what needs to be done immediately.  While it is impossible to know what the future will bring, we can anticipate likelihoods and urge our state, federal and local governments to be proactive on getting protections in place in advance.  A good example of wise, proactive government actions can be found in Walton County, where a rare resource called “dune-lakes” are found.  They exist at only one other place in the world.  Walton County is currently building berms to block Gulf waters from entering these lakes, which are primarily fresh water except during rare occasions when the Gulf gets high enough to come over the low natural berms, such as during a hurricane.  It would be devastating for the oil-contaminated Gulf to get into these lakes.  The County is building a double set of berms across each lake and then putting booms behind the second berm.  In my opinion, this is the type of proactive work that should be provided by the state, but is not happening.

There was an article in the Gannett papers over the weekend where Mike Sole told the reporter that the best oil booms we have in Florida are our beaches.  That would be unbelievable to me if I had not been dealing with Mr. Sole over the past several years and had the opportunity to learn first hand how little he cares for Florida’s resources.  A local newspaper reported a few weeks ago (and this was confirmed to me by a local environmental leader who also heard it) that Mr. Sole told a district BP representative in a meeting about the oil spill that BP has no need to worry in the Panhandle, because DEP would take good care of them.  Whew!!! That is bold, but he knows that he answers to the leadership of the Florida Legislature and they are completely in cahoots with big oil.  Please do not be fooled by his mild manner and seemingly humble countenance.  He is not on our side!

It is disappointing to hear the men in charge for the feds or the state, speak in a way that sounds like they are being deliberately misleading.  I think we know that we cannot trust their judgment (at a minimum) or their integrity (possibility).  For the uninformed, they come across as sincere, but clearly they are both compromised.  Sorry to say.  I wish we had someone we could go to for real, honest, cutting-edge information.  I sincerely hope that if the oil continues to spread to other parts of Florida, that our efforts to strengthen protection for our waters in the Panhandle, will  be helpful to the rest of Florida’s coast.

On a more positive note, I can report that BP contract workers are keeping some of the beaches very clean of oil and even cigarette butts.  The clean-up efforts seem to be spotty, but at least here on Navarre Beach where I live, the beach is being kept in immaculate shape.  So far.  The air is a different story and at various times during the day and night, the odor from the oil can be mild to very strong. 

Believe it or not, we are still working on all of our other projects that are important to Florida’s waters such as the new designated use (unswimmable/barely fishable waters), Buckeye pulpmill, TMDLs/Impaired Waters Rule and numeric nutrient criteria.  I’m going to send you an update on those issues and ask for help again, but in a separate email.  This one is too long already.  Thank you to everyone who made it all the way to this point.  You are real troopers and I appreciate you more than you can know.

For all the creatures in the Gulf,

Linda Young
Director

http://animals.change.org/blog/view/bp_tries_to_block_photos_of_dead_wildlife

by Laura Goldman
June 05, 2010 07:30 AM (PT)
For animal lovers, one of the most heartbreaking aspects of the Gulf spill is the oil-drenched wildlife washing up on shore. If you’re too horrified to look at any photos, you’re in luck – BP doesn’t want you to see them.

As of Friday morning, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s tally of dead animals collected in the Gulf area was 527 birds, 235 sea turtles (six to nine times the average rate), and 30 mammals, including dolphins. Yesterday morning, the spill washed over Queen Bess Island (called “Bird Island” by locals), which is a habitat for Louisiana brown pelicans, the state bird that was once an endangered species. Forty-one of the birds were coated with oil, and that number is expected to rise.

Have you seen the terrible pictures of all this carnage? Neither have I. And neither has anyone else.

Wonder why? The New York Daily News reported on Wednesday that BP has ordered its contractors not to share pictures or otherwise publicize the scores of dead and injured wildlife.

An unnamed BP contractor gave a reporter a very different tour from the one presented to President Obama during his recent visit. Among the “highlights,” if that’s what they can be called, was a decomposing dolphin that the worker said had been found filled with oil.
The shoreline grass of Queen Bess Island was covered with stricken marine life, some dead and some struggling to breathe. The normally white heads of pelicans were dark with oil.

The worker said BP was insistent it didn’t want any photos of the dead animals. “There is a lot of coverup for BP,” the worker told the reporter. “They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence.”

As extra assurance that most of us will never see photographic or any other evidence of the true extent of the carnage, Louisiana residents said BP quickly whisks off dead and injured wildlife to inaccessible buildings and offshore ships. Out of sight, out of mind … but forever in locals’ memories.

New York Daily News reporters trying to get a closer look at the disaster were escorted from a beach by police who said they were taking orders from BP. Even Louisiana residents have been required to sign non-disclosures.

Really, BP? Did you not get the memo this isn’t a police state? You may be able to control politicians by lining their pockets, but your bucks stop there. This disaster is going to affect all of us, and we have every right to see the extent of the damage.

In an encouraging development, this week Charlie Riedel of the Associated Press was somehow able to bypass BP’s myriad roadblocks and snap some appalling photos. They may make us want to shield our eyes, but it’s important we don’t bury our heads just as BP would love for us to do.

Photo Credit: marinephotobank

Laura Goldman is an award-winning writer and longtime animal advocate who lives in the Los Angeles area with two pit bull mix pound pups.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

by David Helvarg President, Blue Frontier Campaign

Thanks David; you’re way with words goes right to my heart.  DV

It was a windy day, feisty like the gal. Although she used to say I never looked happier than when I was coming out of the water after getting beaten up by the waves, the ocean can also provide solace, remind us that we are part of something larger, even when large parts of our own souls have drifted away.

Five years later I returned to Rodeo Beach where oil had come ashore. Behind the orange plastic fencing and pollution warning signs fifty-eight contract workers in yellow hazmat suits were removing oil stained boulders and scraping away the contaminated sand with a front loader called a Bobcat. We’d seen real bobcats around there and I just hoped they didn’t find any dead seabirds to feed on as toxins tend to bio-accumulate up the food chain. I’d come to the beach for a Coast Guard press conference before going out with them to do a damage assessment in parts of Richardson Bay where Nancy and I used to live and it all felt like sacrilege.

This was during the 2007 Cosco Busan spill when a large container ship hit the San Francisco Bay Bridge spilling 53,500 gallons of toxic bunker fuel into the Bay, though the initial estimates by the Ship’s captain were far lower. Three years later you can still find remnant oil in the wetlands near where I live and the Bay’s herring fishery has yet to recover.

According to conservative government estimates the BP Deepwater Horizon’s almost mile-deep wellhead has pumped 500 times a Cosco Busan spill worth of raw petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico since the rig exploded in April.

I remember after Hurricane Katrina spending an evening with a dozen displaced Cajun fishermen who were living in a carport below a three-story office building in Bell Chasse Louisiana. They slept at night on dry patches of carpet in one of the water damaged law offices above. They insisted on sharing the food and beer they had in big coolers with me and told me they weren’t sure they’d move their families back to Buras or Empire or other storm devastated towns I’d seen in Plaquemines Parrish where the world had turned upside down with boats on the land and houses in the water. They would keep catching fish out of the Bayou however. Of that they were certain. Now their livelihoods are at risk from BP’s oil spill as are the wetlands that have sustained their people and culture since 1699 when Pierre Le Moyne landed on the Gulf Coast and reported an abundant game, “and some rather good oysters.”

Oil, unlike some chemicals and vast amounts of plastic polymers we’re also dumping into the sea, will biodegrade over time. In about 40 years much of the damage we’re seeing as the BP spill begins to come ashore will naturally remediate. Of course by then changing weather, ocean productivity and sea level rise linked to the burning of oil and coal will also have radically altered the 40 percent of America’s coastal wetlands now at immediate risk.

I’m deeply tired of wake up calls that don’t seem to wake us up to our intimate and essential connections to the everlasting sea. If the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice linked to climate change won’t do it, if the industrial overfishing of the world’s oceans that threaten commercial extinction of edible fish by mid-century won’t do it, if the loss of over a third of the world’s coral reefs in the blink of an eye in which I’ve lived my life won’t, then I’m not sure an oil spill the size of Connecticut spread throughout the water column and still growing will do it either.

What’s most frustrating is the solutions are known. If you stop killing fish faster than they can reproduce, if you stop producing 100 million tons of single use plastic every year, if you don’t build and dump on salt marshes, mangroves and other protective coastal habitat, if you repair aging sewage systems and don’t use storm drains as toilets, if you move from oil and gas to new energy systems including offshore wind, waves and tides, you can turn the tide. All it takes is our personal and political will.

After Nancy died I thought about returning to war reporting because I knew it was an effective antidote to depression. Instead I founded a non-profit group dedicated to the ocean and seaweed (marine grassroots) organizing thinking that while we’ll probably always have wars we may not always have healthy and abundant seas – or coastal wetlands. I don’t know if it’s too late. All I know for certain is if we don’t try we lose and this salty blue world of ours is too beautiful, scary and sacred to lose.

Special thanks to  David Helvarg