A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [26]
Officials immediately halt fishing in a large area. A group of shrimpers sues for damages. For all the people affected by fisheries closures—everyone from people who grow oysters to people who build weekend homes—the fishing closures answer the question “How bad will this get?” by pushing the needle all the way. At least for the foreseeable future, it has just gotten as bad as it could get. They are suddenly completely out of business. People whose lives are about getting up and going to work are no longer going to work. A certain shock settles in.
Trying to regain footing on the moral high ground, a White House spokesman acknowledges that the administration might revisit the president’s announcement on expanding offshore drilling.
Rear Admiral Mary Landry has repeatedly asserted that BP is the responsible party and will shoulder the costs and organizational duties associated with the cleanup effort while the Coast Guard monitors and approves things. But BP’s interests are not fully in line with the public’s interests. The public wants to know; wants to see.
We don’t normally put the criminal in charge of the crime scene. The perpetrator’s interests are different from the victim’s. Certainly, as far as damages and people out of work, they’d Better Pay. But many people (including me) think the government should push BP out of the way on everything else. The company had a permit to drill. Not a permit to spill. They’re on our property now. BP should be made to focus exclusively on stopping the eruption. All the big oil companies should now be convened in a war room for their best expertise. Our government should direct the efforts on everything else.
But the government keeps deferring to BP. Obama does not federalize the situation. Maybe he’s afraid this will become—as people have been wondering out loud—“Obama’s Katrina.” Maybe he, too, wants to reserve all the blame for BP.
Today’s vocabulary word: “dispersants.” Use it in a sentence: “Most oil floats, but it dissolves into the sea if you apply dispersants.” By April 30, BP has begun sending dispersants down a mile-long tube from a ship. Releasing such chemicals on the deep seafloor—rather than spraying them on surface oil—has never been done before. It’s a secondary toxic leak, this one intentional, sent from above to meet the oil coming from below.
If you’re BP, if part of your liability will depend on how much oil, it’s in your financial interest to do everything you can to: (1) say you think it’s leaking at a much smaller rate than it is and (2) hide as much of it as possible and (3) in as many ways as possible, try to prevent people from seeing the parts you can’t hide. If you’re BP, will you let people see and measure a sea of Billowing Petroleum? Not if you can avoid it.
Dispersed oil stays in the ocean. Because it dissolves into the sea, it’s impossible to see or measure. Like a cake “hides” a rotten egg mixed into the batter, dispersants hide the oil. It’s still a rotten egg, but now you can’t retrieve it.
Dispersants are basically like dishwashing detergents, which dissolve oil and grease. And by dissolving oil concentrated at the surface, they ensure pollution of water that is home to fish larvae, fish eggs, and plankton. At certain concentrations, dispersants are toxic to those fish larvae, fish eggs, and plankton.
And what do the dolphins think? Does it burn their eyes? What is its smell to them now? What taste is conferred to their big, aware brain? Capacity for