A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [67]
A Big Protest is scheduled for here, now, this moment. But so sparse are the protesters—fewer than twenty, among several hundred beachgoers—that even the organizers cannot locate them.
Finally, the protesters. There they are. Here they come. They have signs—“Save the Dolphins”—and a little theater; a woman wears a black veil of mourning. They group up and knock on a media van. There’re enough of them to fill a frame. Passable for local news. Dutifully reported. Story filed: “Local People Do Not Like Oil on Beaches.” Basically Pointless.
One police car stands idling, its occupant utterly relaxed, a bit bored. The woman beneath the veil says, “We already got the police here—and I ain’t even showed my ass yet.”
Oh boy. Time to go.
Restaurant. “The oysters are from—?”
“Texas,” says the waiter. “We might have a month left there.”
Realtor, late forties, energetic blonde, clear blue eyes, too much Sunshine State sun, a tough cookie: “People come for the beaches. If they can’t put their feet in sand, they won’t come.” She’s already refunded 75 percent of this season’s rental down payments. Her home sales are in cardiac arrest.
Activist folksinger to me: “Do you think we can save the dolphins?”
“If it gets down to them needing to be saved? No.”
“There should have been a plan.” She wipes her face, gazes out toward the dock. “It’s weird to fight as you’re grieving the loss of your own place. With global warming, you feel some distance. But this. When the rig sank on Earth Day, I cried myself to sleep. We take turns picking each other up.”
Others chime in. “If the wind tonight was off the Gulf like last night, we couldn’t sit here. The smell was thick. We’ve all been exposed.”
“People are sick. More people are gonna get sick. I took two reporters out and they both got sick. One was in the hospital. Karen right there’s got chemical burns from picking up four dead turtles.”
“This is war. This is all-out war. This is a story that has to be told. And a powerful, very powerful group does not want this story told. I’m just me. I’ve been helping where I can. But my phone’s having problems. My sister’s been helping, too, and her e-mails are getting kicked back to her. I’m not paranoid, but what if somebody’s interfering with our communications? Do you know how I could find out? Since the day the president came through, my phone really hasn’t worked very well. I don’t know. But that’s what’s happened.”
“Every time the oil moves, they change the no-fly zone. They don’t want us to see.”
“How many notebooks do you fill up before you have a book?”
“Karen’s trying to get her kids out of town. There’s nothing for them to do. Everything we do is sailin’, crabbin’, boatin’, shrimpin’, surfin’.”
“I’m really worried about Lori; these dolphins are like her children.”
“If a kid says the water tasted soapy, is that dispersant?”
This is the conversation now.
But while we talk, the water still looks fine. The pelicans unruffled. Gulls galore. Dolphins roll within a hundred yards of the restaurant deck. All looks safe. Nothing feels safe.
The real estate agent says, “If this keeps up much longer, we’re dead. I have people who, if they can’t rent their houses, they’ll get foreclosed. They don’t have the money to refund deposits. And they can’t sell; who’s gonna buy anything now? Everybody’s hit. The gas stations. The laundry services. Even the hairdressers depend on tourists. Gonna be a ghost town.”
Another volley of comments from around the table. “I never thought this could happen.”
“I’m stayin’ to the end. Till they make me leave. This is my home.”
“This was my dream. I’m really mad. I’m upset enough to have dessert.”
On the futility and utility of helping wildilfe, a debate: More than a thousand birds in the Gulf region have been collected alive with visible oil. Serious question: Should they be cleaned or killed? Two years after a 1990 spill in southern California, fewer than 10 percent of oiled brown pelicans that had been cleaned remained alive, and they showed