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.
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