A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [75]
In the same span of days, the biggest mess to come ashore so far is heavily coating Louisiana’s enormous Barataria Bay. Birds sodden in syrupy crude, stranded sea turtles, beaches blanketed in brown goo, marshes bathtub-ringed in oil produce some of the most heart-wrenching photos yet of the blowout.
“This was some of the best fishing in the whole region, and the oil’s coming in just wave after wave. It’s hard to stomach, it really is,” says one fishing guide. A resident adds, “We got little otter families that swim in and out, we got coons, all that good stuff, man. It’s good for the kids out here. They swim, work on the boats, fish.” They did.
Day and night, the well continues injecting more of the same into the oily Gulf. It feels like a siege. Like it’s hopeless.
Because I’d wanted to fly right over the blowout, we had to stay high. But in a different part of the Gulf, author David Helvarg and conservationist John Wathen were low enough to see wildlife. Their video is the most affecting thing I’ve seen yet about the blowout’s ongoing effects. In a TV interview on MSNBC, Wathen, in a mellow Mississippi drawl, describes seeing dolphins mired in oil. “You can see the sheen for miles and miles and miles to the horizon. We figure we saw over a hundred dolphins that were in distress. Some were obviously dead, belly-up in the water. And others, they looked like they were in their death throes.” He talks about seeing the Gulf set aflame, the towering columns of smoke.
Still ninety-three degrees at 5:00 p.m. Everything here is far from everything else. Grand Isle, on the seacoast side of Barataria Bay, is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from New Orleans. The road runs along canals for many, many miles, the roadside vegetation beautiful, lush, green, summery. I especially enjoy seeing the draping Spanish moss hanging from trees. And those black vultures in that robin’s-egg-blue sky, effortlessly circling.
Lots of modest to run-down homes. Not a thriving place. Looks like money is tight. Beauty salons in people’s homes; their signs on the lawn. A sign advertises frogs’ legs and turtle meat. “Ducks for Sale.” Live minnows, live crabs. Docks every now and then. Boats. Bayou Queen, Lady Catherine, Captain Toby, looking both proud and forlorn, tied up, underemployed. “For Sale: Black Angus Bulls and Heifers.” Mitch’s Garden Center. Doc’s Body Shop. The Flower Pot florist. Debra’s Movie World. Tiresome billboards picturing real estate agents, insurance agents, car salesmen. A funeral home’s hand-painted sign. Austin’s Fresh Seafood bears a smaller hand-painted placard: “Closed Due to BP.”
Up over the Intracoastal Canal.
And now displays of grief and rage come bubbling to the surface. At one intersection, murals. Obama’s portrait and the words “What Now?” A Grim Reaper identified as BP, captioned, “You Killed Our Gulf. You Killed Our Way of Life.” A grim statue of a person holding a dead fish, accompanied by a child whose head is bowed, painted as though oil-drenched, labeled, “God Help Us All.”
On the main road, with a speed limit of fifty, I suddenly notice I’m doing eighty. It’s not that I’m in a hurry to get there. It’s that I’m in a hurry to get this over with so I can leave. I’d better watch my speed; a cop is occupied with someone who didn’t watch his.
The road narrows to one lane. The paralleling channel widens as I near the coast. Thirty miles to go. There are some pretty big ships here now. More port facilities for oil rig tenders and the like. More industrial plants related to oil and gas. Not quaint.
At the bridge to Grand Isle, the horizon is punctured by derricks, giant antenna towers guy-wired into the marsh, petrochemical tanks, helicopter pads, warehouses on stilts, tugboats and rig tenders. Chevron’s aircraft operations has its own small airport for helicopters.
While I’m driving through Leeville, the radio conveys that “BP said