A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [69]
Even ashore, I see fishermen walking the docks—their own docks—in their little orange life jackets. Part of how Being Paid wipes away their autonomy, their adulthood, their discretion, their individuality; infantilizes them.
Fishermen are famously talkative, but now the vest wearers “have no comment.” I pity their sorry slavery. But I can afford my anger; I can go home.
We are the only boat on the water not drawing a BP check. We wear no orange vests; we have signed no waivers. I can abstain indefinitely. My companions, their options narrowed to the Breaking Point, can’t. They’re going to lose their bet that the gusher will end soon enough for them to salvage their sense of self. They just got their hazmat training and say they’re hoping to start working the oil cleanup response soon.
Can’t blame ’em; everyone’s under Big Pressure to make a day’s pay.
On the tide in the pass: lumps of oil.
Basic Problem: The marine police, blue lights flashing, say that if we go out, we won’t be allowed back in.
Cody says his boss knows the cops. His boss makes some calls and rings back, saying, “They aren’t letting anyone back in here. They don’t know why.”
A well-planned, well-coordinated, well-executed plan is all that’s lacking. Speculation remains open. Reason is closed. The officious are expert at Being Petty.
Cody says screw it, we’ll go. “Open up.”
We’s takin’ our chances, betting on the unreliability of the marine police’s advice, on inconsistency, on lack of coordination. Those guys may be off their shift by the time we get back. The next guys may say something else. And maybe it’s easier to say no to a boat leaving than to one coming back? We’ll see. They all seem to be making it up as they go.
One thing’s certain: opening a line of boom to let a boat back in makes zero difference as far as the Oil is concerned. This boom is useless against it. You might as well stretch dental floss across your bathtub to hold soapy water to one side.
They lower the boom on our wake. So much effort, applied so diligently, so earnestly—and so unequal to the task at hand.
At 9:00 A.M. the sun squints my eyes. How do the locals stand such heat?
Our mission: find the oil before it finds us. Get a sense of where. How far. How heavy. Paul Revere with outboard power.
Pelicans and helicopters. Ospreys and helicopters. Royal terns and Coast Guard helicopters.
Looking back from three miles off. High-rise condos line the shore. Ugly as hell. No boats out here, just helicopters. All fishing, even catch-and-release, is closed. A fishing boat may not possess fishing gear. That’s to protect us.
Safe from fishermen, the fish must fend for themselves in the dispersant-and-oil seawater. In the low-oxygen end of the pool. For them it’s always either frying pan or fire.
We head to a great fishing spot fifteen miles from shore. Rumors are: someone saw dead fish at the surface there. We are fishing for rumors, fishing for dead fish.
There’s enough wind for a light chop, but the water is calm. Too calm. A bit slick. An ocean normally shows many natural slicks, caused by the bodily oils from schools of fishes, by water of different densities—nothing to do with petroleum. I ask Cody if he thinks these slicks are natural. He says, “What slicks?” I point.
“Naw, this is just—” He waves it away.
From the back of the boat Tommy yells, “A lot of oil here.”
We’re suddenly sliding past coin-sized oil blobs. By the thousands.
Then, none.
Schools of tuna-cousins called little tunny shred the surface chasing small-fish prey. A couple of porpoises, far off. Blue sky. Blue-green sea. A light whiff of oil. Not as bad as I’ve heard tell.
When I ask Cody where he fishes—fished—for tuna and marlin, he points left and says seventy to ninety miles thataway. The big fishes’ address is the names of three oil rigs way out there. The rigs float on half a mile of water. The fish like rigs. “When them things light up at night, it’s like a city.