Andrei.Hicks
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Australian Politics
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Carlsbad, CA
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Pensacola just happened to be my first stop. Quite clearly, one clean beach doesn’t begin to tell the full story - particularly as it is relatively easy to remove oil from sand, whereas the sensitive wetlands further west are altogether more difficult to repair.
Journeying from Florida, through Alabama to the vast, swampy bays of southern Louisiana, however, what struck me most forcibly was that everything looked so normal.
What a contrast to the scenes I witnessed 21 years ago reporting on America’s previous worst oil disaster, when the Exxon Valdez supertanker spilled hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Prince William Sound, Alaska.
Then, I flew over huge, multi-coloured ribbons of oil and waded into thigh-deep pools of the stuff - horrible proof that the Exxon chiefs were lying when they claimed no oil had reached the remote bays.
I spent another grim day helping animal rescuers to scrub matted seabirds and otters.
The area’s ecology was devastated, and an estimated 250,000 birds and 2,800 otters died, plus hundreds of seals and at least 22 killer whales.
But last Wednesday in the Gulf of Mexico, when I went out with one of the Shore Clean-up Assessment Teams (SCAT), whose job is to observe the coastline and chart the location and condition of oil pollution, I felt at times as though I was on an enjoyable sea-nature tour.
One British journalist, who was guided by a populist Louisiana politician whose agenda was obviously to exaggerate the problems, reported seeing extensive areas of oil and claimed ‘fresh waves’ were still swamping wetland areas - even though the BP rig was finally capped three weeks ago.
Of course, since an estimated 200 million gallons has gushed into the Gulf since April and around 50 million gallons remain in the water or on the shore (four times more than the entire Exxon Valdez spill), it is hardly surprising that some heavy pockets can be still found.
But what is truly remarkable is that they are so few and far between. Sailing from early morning to mid-afternoon in sweltering heat on Wednesday, the team I accompanied charted the coastline of two marshy islands off Louisiana’s southernmost tip, Casse-tete and Calumet, covering some 25 miles.
With fishermen still banned from returning to the waters until a final all-clear is given - and charging $2,000 (£1,250) a day to rent their flat-bottom boats to spill response workers, it is clear why BP has been forced to make available a staggering £12.5billion for the clean up, compensation and other legal obligations.
But as our team leader, 41-year-old scientist Stephane Grenon, told me as we skimmed across the shallows, using a craft able to reach the shore is the only sure way to tell whether oil is present.
This is because the wetland fringes in this region are always surrounded by a thick, dark-brown plant sediment known as ‘coffee ground’ for its resemblance to the dregs left at the bottom of the cup.
Even from a few feet away, this sediment can be very easily mistaken for oil, and often when passing boats or aircraft report spotting oil on the shore, this is what they have really seen.
This is one reason why the extent of the coastal oiling has been exaggerated. Indeed, Grenon, a veteran of 25 spills, says he is constantly amazed at how little pollution he finds.
He says: ‘I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s probably the largest spill there has ever been and yet there’s hardly any oil.
‘The ecosystem around here is also used to oil. It’s been here forever, and there are more than 4,000 oil wells in the Gulf.
‘So there are spills and natural seepage all the time, and the fish and plants adapt to deal with them. I’m confident the area will make a full recovery.’
Grenon works for a BP-contracted spill clean-up company, but suspicions that he may have been painting an over-rosy picture were allayed by the three other scientists in the team who represented the federal and state governments.
‘I expected to see miles of oil, but I haven’t seen that,’ said one of the team, David Culpepper, a geologist with NOAA.
‘I’ve been out on the water about 25 days, and I’ve only seen one dead bird - and I’m not even sure if that had any oil on it. And I’ve probably seen ten dead fish.’
Our skipper, Gerrard Cheramie - no BP apologist, but a gnarled Creole fisherman who knows these waters so well that he can sniff the scent of speckled trout shoals - was equally realistic.
He said: ‘The waves here are like a washing machine and you can already see they’re rinsing the oil away. Because the fisheries have been closed down as a precaution, I think our catches will be bigger than ever when we are allowed back.’
His one nagging worry, though, is that the oil may have sunk to the bottom of the sea or that the 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersant will cause some as-yet unrevealed damage to the fish and shrimp breeding grounds.
It is a fear that has been voiced by some scientists, including Professor Ian MacDonald, an eminent Florida State University oceanographer, who dismisses this week’s U.S. government’s report that 75 per cent of the oil has gone as an unsatisfactomixture of science and spin and warns that worrying unknowns remain.
However, our captain’s fleeting doubts evaporated when he spotted a plump shrimp jumping magically from the waves.
‘Look at that! Sure looks healthy enough, don’t it?’ he exclaimed.
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