Government Relations and Policy
Reports from the Gulf
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One Year After the Disaster
Monday, April 18, 2011
Almost a year ago, WWF’s Darron Collins brought us an on-the-ground and in-the-water perspective from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As we approach the one year anniversary of the April 20, 2010, disaster, Darron takes a look back – and forward – at the situation in the Gulf.
In these weeks shrimper, pirogue, seiner, dory and anything else that floats and lands something edible will receive a blessing – the Blessing of the Fleet. The tradition is strongest in regions with historical ties to the Catholic Church. Take Chauvin, Louisiana, for example; or Cocodrie, or Grand Isle – or further east into Pass Christian or Gulf Shores, or even all the way out to Pascagoula. For these towns, peppered as they are across the northern Gulf of Mexico, this year’s Blessing of the Fleet has a different, more ominous feel: what will the shrimping be like a year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster?
One thing’s for sure: most folks in these parts will consume the Gulf crabs, shrimp, crayfish and oysters with particular fervor and will, for the most part, do so without even the slightest fear. People’s appetite for the food they love and the food that shapes society down here is insatiable. You won’t be able to pin any price change on demand, that’s for sure. I love that about this place.
And the sport fishing – for redfish and speckled trout – couldn’t be better. With a good chunk of last year seeing next to no fishing pressure, fishing guides, like my friend Bobby Abruscato of Dauphin Island, Alabama, are licking their chops.
“These fish had their easiest year of the century last year – the fishing this year will be great,” Bobby told me over the phone, “but business is still down for me and everyone I know.”
If you’re angling as a tourist, you’re still wary of Gulf waters.
It’s as if the further you get away from this place, the more pessimistic you are.
There is reason enough to be concerned with the overall situation, even if you plan on having your fill of Gulf seafood. Since April 2010, 300 dead dolphins have washed up on Gulf beaches and we’ve seen a real spike in juvenile mortality this spring. But put on your science cap for just a second and understand that this is the time of year for such mortality – a dolphin’s young life isn’t easy. And even in what we might consider normal conditions, the Gulf environment throws insult upon insult on cetaceans, with natural oil seepage, sound disturbance, the marine equivalent of an L.A. traffic jam, and a high pollutant load from pesticides, industrial waste and some of the things you might find under your sink or in your garage. Correlation, no matter how tempting, does not equal causation where these dead dolphins are concerned.
“Pointing a finger at the spill is not only premature, it could be missing a much bigger and more important set of issues,” explained Dr. Garet Lahvis of Oregon Health and Science University. “The real problem is that there’s not nearly enough money or attention being spent on using science and long-term analyses to understand the origins of these kinds of mortality events.”
There are mortality cases, however, where causation stares you right in the face, as with the oiled brown pelicans that produced some of the most shocking imagery from the Gulf last year. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dealt with 932 “affected” white pelicans – 150 dead and visibly oiled, 227 live and visibly oiled, 226 dead and not visibly oiled, and 149 live and not visibly oiled. One-hundred and eighty dead pelicans fell into the rather unfortunate category of “unknown oiling.” Of the 8,000+ affected birds, only laughing gulls had it worse than the brown pelicans – 3,354 of their kind were touched by USFWS hands.
One hundred and two bird species made that list along with several hundred unidentified individuals. Some – like the pelicans, terns, gulls and all you’d expect to find on that list. But a visibly oiled and completely dead yellow-billed cuckoo seemed strange to me. Oil finds its way into hidden corners.
Though birds dominated the news, let’s not forget the marine reptiles and mammals – USFWS kept a tally on them as well. From among the five species of sea turtle in the Gulf, 1,143 were collected and 608 of those were collected dead. Marine mammals faired much worse. Back in January 2011, USFWS had collected 109 cetaceans; all but nine were dead.
Any potentially uplifting news from these numbers? Well, there were 1,252 birds cleaned and released, 278 nests transported, 14,676 sea turtle hatchlings released, and three of the oiled-but-not-dead cetaceans released. For more on species specifics, visit the USFWS Wildlife Collection Reports or an overview of how the whole oil spill assessment works.
Some hear these mortality numbers and are horrified; others say “I thought it would be a lot worse.”
“The issue of course is that these are the birds, mammals and reptiles the cleanup crews found,” reminds Jonathan Henderson of the New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network. Dead creatures scatter, decay and are consumed with remarkable efficiency. Estimates range from 1:8 to 1:80+ in terms of animal found:animal-actually-affected ratios.
But looking back and considering the present, our biggest concerns in the Gulf of Mexico are those living and non-living things we cannot see at all – what’s going on in the deepest, darkest recesses of the Gulf, where a soup of dispersant, weathered and otherwise broken down oil, and scads of poorly understood but extremely important life forms boil about. That hidden witches’ brew is troubling.
Looking ahead, three things seem to jump out at you as “things to do differently next time,” – for there will of course be a next time (in fact there have already been scores of micro-spill “next times”). First, focus on the containment and absorption rather than dispersal of oil. The ecological arguments for the use of dispersant are few and weak. Although it’s not pretty to look at, oil we can see can be dealt with and is readily made less toxic through weathering. Oil on a sandy beach is, however ugly, about the best scenario one could dream up in terms of a cleanup.
Second, if ever there was a need for a reinvigorated commitment to science, it’s now. In the public eye oil spills behave like a heart attack. But it’s the damage to the heart after the acute trauma that we need to worry about. Funding for science may spike after an oil spill, but the trend over decades is in the wrong direction. Working with the funds available, scientists will not be able to tease apart the long-term effects of this spill. Under current funding scenarios, we will continue to make stabs in the dark and equate correlation with causation.
And third, to push the analogy just a bit further, it’s the heart disease and the behaviors that lead to that disease that are the real issue. Our addiction to oil and our overall relationship with energy – how we look for it and how we access it – are the things humanity needs to contend with. How many Deepwater Horizons are necessary? How many more Japanese nuclear accidents? How much more Middle Eastern violence? A complete overhaul of policy and legislation, in terms of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) and beyond, is an obvious first step.
What keeps me up at night is the thought of a Gulf-magnitude energy disaster up in the Arctic, where our capacity to respond would be next to nothing. That and, of course, the plight of the men and women I met down in the Gulf who are still suffering from this disaster and who have been so quickly forgotten by the rest of the world.
I met many people during my Gulf excursions, but it was Joseph, an out-of-work disabled shrimper, who had the greatest impact on me. I have no doubt he’ll be eating his fair share of mollusks this season. I hope he’ll also be catching them and putting money in his pocket from the harvest. But I’m not sure of his whereabouts, as Joseph’s not answering his cell phone. That’s likely a good sign – I’m guessing he’s in celebration mode at the local Blessing of the Fleet. May that uncomfortable but highly effective flat bottomed boat of his be blessed by Archbishop Gregory himself!
For more information on the Gulf oil spill, learn from two of WWF’s local partners based in the region:
