Explore the Salt Marsh Ecosystem

This video from YouTube explains what makes up the salt marsh ecosystem along the Gulf coast and shows the myriad of life forms that depend on them. It's well done and easy to understand.

For those of you not from the Gulf, it will help you understand what is at risk if the oil contaminates these magical places.

Moss Point: The People Step Up

This is a remarkable story that's as American as it gets. A story about a city coming together to help their community. To help each other, down to each individual person when the need arises. How this came about was the vision of Darlene Carter, the President and CEO of the Moss Point Visionary Circle.

This story covers a recent symposium on the BP spill sponsored by MPVC and an interview with Darlene Carter. She describes why they put on and the back story behind their organization. Her complete interview is included in the video.

View on ExposureRoom

After the camera stopped rolling, I asked Darlene to clarify what she said about working with outside alliances and consortia. She pointed back to the Katrina aftermath where those who waited for outside help took the longest time to recover. That was her "aha" moment. She saw the power, intelligence and spirit inside the people of Moss Point and set about organizing them into a formidable force to rebuild, restore and renew.

The MPVC's focus on the children makes sense. Any parent knows that it's the young ones who will ultimately take our places here. They need the best foundation that we can give them to build a better future. So they step in to help when parents' primary concerns are forced elsewhere, like how they are going to put food on the table. The sunlight of the world does not shine as brightly upon Moss Point as it does in more affluent communities so Darlene and the MPVC are making their own light.

This comes from a deep place in the American tradition. From the first days of the Colonies when Native Americans in Plymouth helped the Pilgrims bring in their first harvests, to the farms of the hills and plains where people pushed outward to build farms. Those communities came together to raise barns and lend a hand when times were tough.

It still goes on today, although it's not always visible for us to see. There are flashes that show up as "human interest" stories in print and electronic media but they are short shots that quickly fade. This story will stand in the sunlight that the people of Moss Point have made for themselves, adding their light to the sum of light.

How the Well Will Be Capped

CBS News created a succinct animation of how the blown BP well will be capped.


This was posted on July 25th and has now dated information about tropical depression Bonnie, but the portion on the capping procedure is still germain.

The BP Spill: Has the Damage Been Exaggerated?

This is the headline from the Time Magazine article which serves up interesting data points comparing Deepwater Horizon with the Exxon Valdez which suggest that there has been far less harm done to Gulf wildlife and the environment than what happened in Alaska.

It's an interesting article, backed up with data from reputable scientists and organizations that suggests that things might get back to normal quicker than most anyone thought. It also posits that there has been more harm done to humans than to animals because of the reaction to the spill from the press and environmental groups because of situational picture that they have painted for the world.

Although only two Internet pages long, there's a lot in there to consider. Some might say that this is a contrarian view, but it is very much worth reading and considering the points made. You can read the article here.

Thursday Open Thread

It's now been more than 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon exploded. This is an open forum for your comments. Anything goes, but please keep it family friendly. You shouldn't say anything that you would want your mom hearing you say.

Thanks.

Photo credit: US Navy.

The Broader Business Dilemma

View on ExposureRoom

This new video pulls back from the story of how the spill effects one person and takes a more macro view and tries to quantify some of the impact with statistics. Now Samuel Langhorne Clemens (you know him better as Mark Twain) said, "There are three kinds of facts. Lies, damn lies and statistics." The company that did the survey in this video segment didn't disclose their sample size or methodologies so I cannot vouch for the validity of the results, but they seem reasonable.

Before we get to the facts, we look at Orange Beach, AL on the day that Jimmy Buffett played his benefit on the beach. I spoke with one parrothead who came over from Louisiana for the show. He and his group took pity on me, offering sun screen and bottled water.

All the good things that you've heard about southern hospitality is absolutely true.

Please watch this and the other videos and tell your coworkers, friends and family about it. Talk with them about the Gulf and what you can do to help the region bounce back. It's up to all of us, and every little bit will help.

UPDATE: I heard a radio advert and saw a billboard for a benefit concert to be headlined by Jay Leno at the Beau Rivage casino in Biloxi on August 21. He will be the only one on the bill with tickets starting at $40. They are available now.

I've seen Jay in a theater where he tests out material for "The Tonight Show" and he was very funny. Since he was playing to the crowd and not TV cameras, he came across very differently. Since I was sitting right in front of the small stage, I realized how very tall he really is.

It will be interesting to see how well it does since Leno and casinos appeal to a different demographic than Buffett doing a beach show, but it will undoubtedly help. Who will be the next to step up for a benefit?

Note: A couple of things. Please follow this blog. As a follower you will be kept up to date on new postings, which happen about once a day. A whole bunch of followers might raise our visibility. Also, you can always view higher resolution versions by clicking the link "View on ExposureRoom" under the video window.

Quick Update

It was a busy day today. I spent the morning shooting a couple of wonderful interviews at the Audubon support center this morning and am arranging for a third that I think will round out that video segment quite nicely. So that was time very well spent. These people, both the staff and volunteers are really working hard to make a difference, and their succeeding.

What I learned from them that sticks out is that you don't have to be here or open your wallet to help. Go to their web site and poke around a bit. If you live on a migratory route that passes through the Gulf region, you can set up a "feeding station" (my words) in your back yard where birds can chow down during their travels. If for some reason those birds' normal Gulf feeding grounds can't provide the food they need, you can help fatten them up a bit in preparation. They say it better than I do, so go there and see if you might be able to help.

The afternoon was spent at a community center in Moss Point where a presentation about the spill for kids had presentations from BP, the Mississippi Dept. of Environmental Quality and a host of other groups to inform the local children what was going on and to answer their questions. One child wondered when they could go back to the beach and swim. In Mississippi, they can now. The beaches are open. Another wanted to go fish. He can now. It's catch and release only, but that's for now. Another child asked, "What about the turtles, are they OK?" That just broke my heart. But it did my heart good to know that they care about what happens in their community. More on Moss Point in another post. I'm working on a video segment about this and will be online this week. It's second in the queue.

Finally, props go out to WLOX 10 TV for seeking out stories on the spill. I first met Krystal Allan at Kenny's bait shop when she was chasing a story. We've kept in touch and she's trying to help me with contacts and moral support. Big thanks to her for that. Today, Patrice Clark was on scene in Moss Point covering the presentations. She pitched something to me that has me intrigued. More on that in another post.

I haven't seen any other reporters or news vehicles in my travels except for in Orange Beach, AL for the Buffet show. Even CBS was there. For the local media I have a question. Can there be a more important story to your viewers, listeners and readers than the spill? Surely it touches their lives in large or small ways every day. Is there any other story you're following that does?

I want to say, "shame on you" to the other assignment editors, but I won't. Not yet.

The Real Reason I'm Doing This

I need to do something to give back. It's not professional, it's not political. It's personal. This video describes how I got here. Think of it like a Foreword in a book. I don't write. I do video.

View on ExposureRoom

Note: This is a low resolution version. There is a mid res and HD version available. Click the link to go to ExposureRoom

Doing What Has To Be Done

Tropical storm Bonnie tripped over the Florida peninsula and was battered by some upper level winds unfriendly to storm development. It dropped to a tropical depression and broke up into a bunch of windy rain squalls. So the Gulf dodged a bullet. This one at least. It caused me to remember talking with a guy who was watching over his kids out on a pier about a week ago.

He is a battalion fire chief from a little town farther north in Mississippi. I asked him his thoughts on the Gulf oil spill from a visitor's perspective. He said things were obviously catastrophic for the tourism business. He said that you go to the casinos and you’ll see people sitting at the gaming tables or at the slots. There will be one person then six or seven empty chairs before there’s someone else. He said that when you see that, you know it’s bad.

I asked him if he thought there were any comparison between the BP spill and Katrina. About a week earlier, a few folks from Thibodaux, Louisiana told me that there were some in their view. and he said that there’s really no comparison. He wasn’t in Louisiana but up in his home town after Katrina and dealing as best as he could with the aftermath. His take was that after the BP rig blew they had a chance to prepare for this because it was almost two months before any oil arrived on the Mississippi shores. Katrina was different because the storm’s path was really all over the place, leaving those who actually ended up in its path only two days to prepare for it.

He told two stories about Katrina. There’s a 2000 acre storage fuel facility near his area. After the storm hit there, there was an order that went out from the President Bush that the top priority was to get that facility back as quickly as possible. The reason why was that facility supplied the lion’s share of fuel for the eastern half of the United States. That facility had to be put back on line as quickly as possible or the disaster in the Gulf was going to spread to a big part of the country in the form of fuel shortages. That facility held gasoline, diesel and natural gas.

The town the Chief calls home is in a rural area and a lot of its residents living out in the countryside. Now, a lot of those rural residents were shut ins who rely others to deliver the things they need. After Katrina, what they needed most was water and ice. The need for water is obvious, but ice was equally important because many of those folks relied on medication to stay alive and those medications, such as insulin, had to be refrigerated. He didn’t have enough vehicles in his department’s fleet or people on his staff to deliver those life sustaining supplies on a regular basis. But small town America does what it’s always done. The people volunteered their vehicles and time to make the needed runs.

Although he didn’t say it directly, I inferred from his description of events that the town’s commercial gas stations couldn’t pump fuel because they had no power. The fire department had its own supply of gasoline and diesel for its vehicles and a generator to run the pumps. So when the volunteers came in to make their life sustaining deliveries, he’d give them each ten gallons of gas. Being responsible, he kept a log of all the fuel given out and the people to whom he gave it. Once the clean up in the region got going and the main roads were open for travel, representatives from the federal government came in to “help”. I’d guess it was FEMA but he didn’t specify. When the feds saw what he was doing, they objected. They said that he was misappropriating government property by doling out that fuel. The Chief said, okay. Then he went out and got some paper and Magic Markers and made up a bunch of signs that said something like “Official Emergency Disaster Relief Vehicle” and affixed them to his volunteers’ cars and trucks with Duck Tape, because that was the only kind of tape he had.

That wasn’t enough to satisfy the feds so he went into his storage room and found a bunch of emergency vehicle lights and gave them to his volunteers to mount to their cars and trucks. He said he had no idea if any of the lights actually worked, but he thought it might convince the feds that the cars and trucks were about as officially part of the Fire Department’s relief effort as he could make them. The federal people still maintained that what he was doing was against the rules.

That tore it for him. He turned to the feds and said, “Fine. If you don’t like it put me in jail. When I’m in there you’re going to have to give me food and water and air conditioning because you have generators in the jails. If you want to do that, go ahead. Until you do, I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing. I would much rather give these people some gas so they can deliver this ice and water that our people need to stay alive than send out a truck to take away dead bodies.”

I don’t know for certain because he never said, but I suspect that ended that complaint straight away.

The Chief also talked about a father and son who came down to Waveland to help out after the storm. The father was a Viet Nam veteran who’d apparently been in the thick of it over there. He never talked about it but it was understood that he had seen some rough stuff over there.

Once the pair was done working in Waveland and they were heading back, the father turned to his son and said, “That was the worst thing I have ever seen.”

One cannot wonder what these people who live down here are made of that they live through disaster after disaster but refuse to leave their home. They hunker down to stay safe during the storms, then they come together to help each other rebuild… to reclaim their home and their communities. I’d call it grit and what the fictional Senator Jefferson Smith said, “a little looking out for the other guy.”

I’m an generally an optimist so I’d like to think that’s what Americans do when their friends, families, communities or country is in need of help. To me, that’s more valuable than any check someone might write to a relief charity somewhere. It’s just one of the things that makes America an exceptional and remarkable country.

NOTE: I know the Chief's name and town, but I didn't want to use it in this story because I never asked his permission so the name and place are withheld to protect the innocent and the resourceful.


Update: Edited for formatting only on 9/24/10

Kenny DiNero's Interview is Online

It might take me a while to get this right because I'm running on the edge of my technical expertise. The video is at ExposureRoom. I did that because YouTube can only handle 10 minutes at a time and Vimeo will only accept 500MB per week and the source file ended up 506MB. Missed it by that much.
The video is now embedded. You can also watch it in different resolution options by clicking on the link below the video window labeled "View in ExposureRoom".

View on ExposureRoom

One of the nice things about ExposureRoom (and Vimeo for that matter) is that you can let people download the video. I'd respectfully request that you do that and share it with everyone you know. Not just for Kenny, but for all of those put on the back foot by the spill.

The Scariest Words In The World

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. Yea, it’s an old joke but it’s appropriate for this post.

Let me introduce you to Kenny DiNero. He owns a bait and fuel dock in Ocean Springs and runs a couple of shrimp boats. I sat down with him this morning to talk about where the oil spill has put him and his business and what he told me was not pretty. I expected that because his business is at the nexus of everything hurt by the spill. Shrimping was banned so his boats had nothing to do. The charter business tanked because fishing was banned. Fishing tournaments were cancelled, and they were big ones.

One sad fact tells the tale. Yesterday, July 21, the shop brought in $214. That’s it. It was apparent that wasn’t going to come close to making his monthly nut.

So, he goes to the government to apply for remuneration for the business he’s lost. As he tells it, the person he spoke with couldn’t do anything relative to lost sales for bait and fuel, but he could help him file a claim on the two boats. The government needed a bunch of financial records including tax returns from 2007, 2008 and 2009. He pulls together what they need, delivers that to them and waits. After a while he called to find out what was going on. Kenny was told that he needed to resubmit all the paperwork again because the first set was filed away in an archive somewhere. Not a problem because he had copies. He sent them in and waited some more. So the short story is that almost a month has gone by and he’s yet to see a dollar, but the government rep said he should get a check in August.

That’s only part of the story that he told me for just over a half hour this morning in front of my camera. As he talked, it became clear that his situation is effected by a bunch of situations set in motion when the well blew. What came quickly clear to me is that Kenny DiNero is one sharp, hard working cat with a sly sense of humor even though he didn’t smile much or laugh at all. His situation wasn’t even remotely humorous.

I can’t even start to retell his story because it’s incredibly complex, involves things that as an outsider I don’t understand and the outcome is still unknown. That present me with a problem I mulled over at lunch and during the short drive back to my hotel. After watching the interview as it was transferred from tape to my computer I realized that I had to use all of the interview. All 35 minutes of minutes. It’s a thought that might make some news field producers and documentarians look for tall buildings to jump off of. I can’t do it any other way. To leave out any part of it would be to ignore an important part of the jigsaw puzzle he’s living in. It would alter the context of what he’s going through. It wouldn’t be his story any more. It would be the story that I wanted to tell about him, and it wouldn’t be the truth, the whole truth.He also tells it very, very well.

So I’m going to violate every rule of video production and run all of it. From his answer to my first question to when a dog that adopted him after Katrina that he named “Pirate” jumped up on the bench next to him and the interview ended, you will hear everything that he said to me. I will cut video away to b-roll periodically to show some of the things he talks about but his audio will be complete and uncut. Since I asked questions off-mic, I’ll use full screen graphics for them.

The good news is that Kenny DiNero is very articulate and tells his story well. He sounds good too. I spent the afternoon and early evening adding graphics and b-roll to his story and I don’t think that if you care about what’s happening in the Gulf, you won’t be bored. But if you are, remember that I didn’t come down here to remake Caddyshack.

Coming up…

Dispersant, friend or foe.

UPDATE: Corrected the date when Kenny submitted his claim. The original article said that months had passed since he submitted his claim. In fact, he submitted it at the beginning of July. Also corrected his gross revenue number for the day described, which my weevil filled brain remembered incorrectly.

Public Meeting Tonight

This release came from the Jackson County Mississippi Public Information Office last Friday.

Jackson County Supervisor Mike Mangum is hosting an oil spill response public meeting on Thursday, July 22 from 6 – 8 p.m. at the Civic Center in Pascagoula. Eight different agencies responding to the oil spill will staff booths at this informal open house style meeting. Residents are invited “to come and go” during the hours of the meeting and visit with each group personally.

The following representatives are scheduled to attend to answer questions- BP claims, BP Vessels of Opportunity, clean-up volunteers, MS Dept. of Environmental Quality, MS Dept. of Marine Resources, MS WIN Job Center, Small Business Administration, and U.S. Coast Guard.

“I hear and receive legitimate oil spill questions from residents everyday. These questions are beyond just one person’s expertise. That’s the reason I decided to host a public meeting for citizens to get answers in a comfortable environment,” Mangum explained.

This is the second public meeting County Supervisors have hosted since the oil spill. For more details about the public forums please call the District 3 Office at 228-769-7641.

I only heard about the meeting this morning on a local radio news broadcast. It would make sense for locals to attend.

Real Life invades the blogosphere

The second of two really informative days. Unfortunately, at half past 11 where I am, it's hard to say much. If fortune smiles tomorrow, there might be two new insights by dinner time.

And yes. I'll follow up on the answer to yesterday's tease.

Who's Really Helping

But first, the news.

There are two story lines of interest to me now that the big gusher has been apparently quashed. One occurred to me even before I got here two weeks ago, and that is all about the aftermath. How long will it be before things get back to normal, if ever. Before I get to that, CNN reported this morning that something’s still leaking. This was confirmed by Fox News this afternoon. CNN’s report said,

The federal government's oil spill response director says testing has revealed that there is a "detected seep a distance from the well" and has ordered BP to quickly notify the government if other leaks are found.

"When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours," retired Adm. Thad Allen said in a letter to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley. "I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed."

That’s the key, isn’t it The other leaks. The question is how to know which of these potential seeps are related to Deepwater Horizon and which ones aren’t. How’s anyone to know. As a completely uncredentialed outsider, my guess is that BP will be blamed because they used the process called “fracing”. The technical term is “hydraulic fracturing” and you can look it up here. According to what I’ve learned, fracing can cause leaks because of the great pressure it uses.

I don’t care about the blame. I just want the oil leaks stopped. I’m probably not alone.

To the “Life After the Oil Spill” story. Best I can figure, there are three major components to bring things back for the human residents of the Gulf. Fishing, tourism and oil. The following is from the Associated Press.

After three long months, the bleeding from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico has been finally, mercifully stanched. But in so many ways, the prognosis remains uncertain.

Which species will rebound, and which have been pushed beyond the brink? Has the oil accelerated the die-off of marshlands that protect one of America’s great cities and make this the nation’s second most-productive fishing region? What effect will the BP spill have on the future of deep-sea drilling — at once boon and bane — in the Gulf?

And, of more immediate concern to people along the nation’s southern coast, where will the millions of as-yet uncollected, unburned, unseen gallons of oil from the blown-out Deepwater Horizon well end up?

Fishing, tourism and oil are all linked to the questions in that report. No one knows those answers now and it’s unlikely that they will any time soon, so everybody waits.

Where’s the real help?

I was shooting video in Gautier, MS this afternoon on private but apparently abandoned land when I was approached by a woman asking me if I was from the press. Her name is Miz Arnold and she’d lived there over fifty years. I told her I was freelance and covering the spill. This started a conversation that lasted nearly two hours and travelled to three different places. She pointed out the boats working for BP in the bay between Gautier and Pascagoula. When I got there, about six runabouts were running at slow and fast speeds in the bay going no place that I could discern. Miz Arnold pointed out two skimming vessels tied to pilings in the shade of a railway bridge. As I photographed the bay, the runabouts all slowed down and slowly moved away nearly out of view on the far side of another bridge and didn’t return while we were there. The people on the skimming boats never moved, but kept their eyes on us.

Everyone knows that boats that go fast make wakes. What’s not so obvious is that those wakes, or waves of significant size will push floating oil being held back by booms over those booms, free to invade the water those booms are meant to protect. Also, there was brown foam up against some of the boom where the runabouts were cavorting. Miz Arnold said that was oil. While there was no way I could know that for certain, anyone who’s pulled out a dipstick from an engine with a blown head gasket knows what an emulsion of oil and water looks like. It looked like what was next to the boom.

And the skimmers were just tied up in the shade.

Miz Arnold said she was on the phone with the Coast Guard over the weekend because some of the workers had moved a boom away from one opening in a small semi-circular canal leaving it open to the oil in the currents. The Coast Guard arrived and she showed them what was going on and explained the problem. At least one day later there was still no boom.

Miz Arnold told that her friends and neighbors were watching, taking pictures, talking with each other and keeping on the authorities. They’re doing everything they can do because they care very deeply for their beautiful stretch of the Gulf Coast. It’s like a neighborhood watch. Maybe that’s what’s needed.

I spoke earlier with a marine sciences student from Southern Mississippi State who’d just returned from five hours on a boat in the Gulf doing research on his very technical marine life study that I couldn’t begin to comprehend, but he seemed to know his stuff. His thought was similar to Miz Arnold’s. That was the nature groups, bird watchers and fishermen and women could do more and be more effective than government folks from Jackson, or Washington DC.

Coastal Mississippi recovered so much faster from Katrina than New Orleans because when the wind stopped and the water receded, they got to work and started cleaning things up and rebuilding. They did it themselves and didn’t wait for the government to do it for them.

The current crisis isn’t like Katrina. It can’t be fixed with a backhoe, saw and a hammer. But no one knows the marshes, inlets, coast and canals like Miz Arnold and her neighbors. Can’t they be trained on how to lay and secure boom? You know that they’ll use it to protect the nests of ducks, pelicans and gators (or crocks… I never know the difference). They’ll make sure it stays where it’s supposed to be because it’s their marshes, canals, pelicans and gators. They love them like they love their home. Their community.

What you can do is everything you can do. Absolutely everything. Anyone want to start a new kind of neighborhood watch?

(Aside to Miz Arnold: Many thanks for spending your time with me and teaching me so much. You're a great lady of the South.)

Next time…

The scariest words in the world.

Oil leak stopped, mood's up a little

It’s been a squally weekend. Mostly cloudy punctuated by some pretty enthusiastic storm cells. One had enough gumption to take down the power for a spell. Outlook for the rest of the day is for more of the same. I don’t know if it was because it’s Sunday morning, the weather, or both but there was nobody out. Nobody save two joggers and a cyclist on a beach path. The village center was eerily empty. I saw one guy walking with an electric guitar in his hand and offered him a ride so his instrument wouldn’t get wet, but he was only one house away from his home. Oh well. The upcoming week looks for more sunshine.

Tourism up a tick

National and local news reports that hotel reservations are up following the apparently successful testing of the spewing well’s cap. MSNBC reports that some of the recreational fishing bans have been lifted in Louisiana state waters except for oiled and boomed areas, whatever that means. Alabama and effected Florida state waters are open for catch and release. It’s all still closed in Mississippi. The National Marine Fisheries Service bulletin issued on July 13th states that all fishing, including catch and release is prohibited in the closure area which covers 35% of the Gulf. Their web site said that there were no changes to the closure on July 17th. I suspect that they’re referring to waters outside the states’ three mile limits, but I’m not certain.

The government also estimates that about half of Louisiana’s oysters are dead. Not because of oil contamination but because of increased fresh water flowing from the mouth of the Mississippi river designed to keep the oil away from the delta. (Never heard anything about that tactic before now.) Could we have turned the corner on the spill? I think it’s more like the turn has started but we haven’t really gotten pointed in the right direction yet. There are too many different things, good and bad, that can happen before anyone knows for sure.

A Whale appears to be Moby Dick

After all of the hullaballoo over the gigantic A Whale crude Hoover’s arrival for real world testing in the Gulf, it apparently has come up wanting. According to Fox News, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Paul Zunkunft called the amount of oil collected by the behemoth, “negligible”.

I don’t have any pictures of the ship, but in the ones I have seen, the collection openings appeared to be above the waterline. How was that going to collect anything? There was also the issue of how high or low those openings were going to be as the ships tanks filled up with the oily water. I mean, the more weight that’s put in a ship or boat, the lower it’s going to sit in the water. Now there could have been a ballast system that would pump out clean sea water from holding tanks as oil was collected, but that was never explained, at least not in anything I’ve read.

Optimism

I guess it’s a good sign when Billy Nungesser, the very vocal president of Plaquemines Parish appears hopeful. According to Associated Press, Nungesser said, “It’s somewhat a sense of relief knowing, hopefully, that every bit of oil we pick up from here on out will be a little less that’s going to be out there, as opposed to picking up less than was being spilled and losing ground on a daily basis. It’s a great feeling.”
I was down on the beach this morning between rain squalls and walked up to a parked SUV with two US Fish and Wildlife folks inside to tell them that their headlamps were still on. They thanked me then one of them handed me a laminated card with a dozen phone numbers and almost half that many web addresses on it. He asked me to call one of the numbers if I saw any oiled wildlife or anything they should know about. I told them that I’d been in the region for about ten days and that I hadn’t seen anything dead or oiled anywhere I’d been and suggested that things might be getting better. He agreed that it was. He said that there are ongoing problems still on the offshore islands and that with the wind clocking around from the south, there might be some stuff heading for the coast. I’ll be watching over the next few days.

Next time…

Who’s really helping in this fight.

Life after the BP well exploded

I've started this blog to, effectively, help me write a script for a short documentary on the Gulf region and the impact the oil spill has had. I'm a one man crew and not from this region, and since I'm rarely the smartest guy in the room, I'm looking for help, ideas, thoughts, observations and anything others can contribute to the project.

Firstly, let me say that this isn't going to be political. There are enough people out there who will spin based upon their own perspective. I think it's more about the people impacted by the oil and what we can do to help them bring their home back to where it needs to be economically, ecologically and try to give a clear picture of it all.

Let me be clear. Little red tar balls did not eat the Redneck Riviera. If you knew me, you'd know that I revel in sarcasm and irony. Hence the title. The majority of what makes people want to visit and live in the Gulf region is still here and intact. True, fishing is off the table for probably the rest of this year. Maybe longer. But there's so much more to enjoy.

My view is that of an outsider. I was born a swamp Yankee and lived most of my long life near the other two coasts. I spent a couple of days in Jackson, MS on business and attended an Apple developer conference in New Orleans, both back in the 1990s. Before getting here about ten days ago, that was the extent of my exposure to the region. Full stop.

Some thoughts since I got here...

1. These are some of the friendliest people in the world and I've been nearly around the world in both directions. They're at least as friendly as the Australians and Aussies are bloody friendly, mate.
2. It's as flat as your hat and carpeted with lush beauty. All the bayous and seashore are littered with fascinating wildlife, especially the birds. The sounds they make and the colors they wear are alien and exotic to me.
3. Some of the best eating is to be had here. Their barbecue is legendary and deservedly so. I had some blackened shrimp at a little seaside dive that was epic, but I'll eat anything that's blackened (except maybe pancakes).
   
4. There's no one here. There's no traffic. No waits in restaurants. Lots of vacant hotel rooms. It seems the world thinks that the Gulf region is closed. It's not, and it needs you to come down for a visit.
   
5. There's very little observable oil on the beaches in MS and AL. I haven't been to Louisiana yet and it might be worse there because it's closer to the spill's main path. I never saw any oil in Orange Beach, AL or Ocean Springs, MS. There's some in Waveland but not much.
   
6. Oil protection measures are everywhere. I've seen hundreds of miles of boom. Protective boom, absorbent boom, inflatable boom. Barriers of absorbent mat have been erected everywhere to keep oil out of the marsh land. There's no way to know if everything that can be done is being done, but there's a lot going on to mitigate the damage.
   
7. Five years on, there's still pockets of Katrina-caused destruction that hasn't been repaired. Most of what I've seen was down in Waveland (which is as far west as I have been thus far) and remote beach properties in Ocean Springs. That's a head scratcher for me.
   
8. It ain't the heat. It's the humidity. 'Nuff said.

The friendly folks are here, waiting to serve you up some luscious food, put a comfortable roof over your head and show you a good time. Isn't it time for a road trip?

So, to you Gulf coasters... any stories or thoughts you want to share?