Gulf Coast Oil Spill

Part 2: An Interview with LSU Ornithologist Dr. James Van Remsen About the Gulf Oil Disaster

“I hate to go back and Monday morning quarterback a lot of the decisions that were made, because I wasn’t there in the trailer at the time”

In Part one of my interview with Dr. James Van Remsen we spoke about research and LSU’s role in studying the oil spill, as well as the Unified Command’s response to the disaster. Dr. Remsen is a pre-eminent ornithologist and Professor in LSU’s Department of Natural Sciences as well as the curator of the Museum of Natural Sciences.  When we left off, Dr. Remsen was exploring the idea of separating the emotional response from the more scientific response often required when confronting environmental catastrophe’s like the Deepwater Blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Dr. Remsen: I want to make sure that you know, as far as the birds, the populations of birds, nothing makes me madder than seeing some bird covered in oil washed up on the beach.  You know, at the emotional level, or a crab, some poor crab.  It just really gets me.  I want to make clear that at least at the gut level that really gets me.

Drew: That was something I wanted to touch on.  You know, in the beginning (of the spill), there was the whole debate about euthanasia versus capture and rehab and the value in saving birds. Where do you stand? That is, on the individual level versus population dynamics and population biology.  I mean no person can walk by an oiled bird and not try and save it.

Dr. Remsen: Exactly, what kind of human would do that? You know, you’ve got no soul if you can’t feel bad about that and try to do something.

Drew: For the first part of June they were rescuing birds on Queen Bess Island, I mean they let Jeff Corwin do it, and he’s obviously not affiliated with any agency or anyone that has authority to do that, although I’m sure he has experience, and then when (hurricane) Alex passed in early July, pretty much all of the juvenal Royal Terns in the colony became oiled, and they have this protocol which I think is largely based on Pacific seabird colonies which are very different in structure and dynamics than colonies here. But on Queen Bess, and certainly Raccoon Island which is three miles long, the species are segregated, the Pelican area is totally different than the Tern area, and it would be very possible to go on to these islands without disrupting the whole colony, or really any major part of the colony, especially if you went on in the early morning.  You definitely could have rescued these birds without undo harm to the rest of the colony. I mean you could have swooped up many of these birds with a net, without leaving the boat.  And they categorically chose to not touch these birds, and they all died.  To me there has to be some other motivation going on.  Whether or not they didn’t want to deal with it, or they didn’t want to somehow become responsible for those bird’s lives.  I don’t know what was going on there.

Dr. Remsen: I mean, what do you do with them, once you net them.  Do you bring them to the rehab center or do you euthanize them?  You know, if you bring a thousand baby Royal Terns to a rehab center there’s no way. They’re going to die, at least a good percentage of them are going to die there, and besides, let’s say you successfully rehab them, you think a baby Royal Tern is going to be able to learn how to fish without Mom and Dad?

Drew: Yeah, every Royal Tern you see right now is following Mom and Dad, and being fed.

Dr. Remsen: They’re being fed, they’re begging, and even then they have a pretty high mortality rate.  Otherwise, we’d be knee deep in Royal Terns.  So, I don’t know , the humane thing in that case would probably be to euthanize them, but there’s no way that BP is going to go out there and do that, or even Wildlife and Fisheries, no.

Drew: No, our public sentiment would never allow that.

Dr. Remsen: No.  It’s just not worth it.  Even if it’s the right thing to do, it’s not worth it.

That’s the part of the debate that doesn’t interest me that much, at least as a scientist.  I mean, emotionally, a thousand dead baby Royal Terns kills me, but I try to separate that from OK, limited resources, what do we do, what’s best?

Drew: So speaking of resources, it seems to me that BP is a 97 billion dollar company, and that telemetry equipment exists.  It’s small. It’s very easy to have a receiver in a plane. They’ve got planes in the air all of the time anyway.  They could locate birds, and track their movements, and to my knowledge there’s been no effort to do anything like that with the rehabilitated oiled birds?

Dr. Remsen: No, none! Paul Conover on LAbird(Louisiana’s birding list serve) voiced that early on, and I agree with that one hundred percent.  At least in terms of evaluation, let’s find out!  We can dry lab it, we can think you know maybe the baby Royal Terns aren’t going to survive, or the adult Brown Pelicans will, but there are no data, there’s just people blabbering without any information to back them up.  You know something from a South African Penguin colony is not necessarily transferrable to our situation.  Lets get some information.  You know, the scientist in me wants that to happen.  I don’t want to do it.  It’s just not my thing but somebody should be doing that.  And BP could easily fund that.

Drew: And to me, it speaks to something a little more nefarious that “they” don’t want that data out there.  They don’t won’t to know the survivorship rate of these birds, especially if it’s low.

Dr. Remsen: Of course not.  You know that’s not going to stop the NSF from studying it.  It’s exactly the type of thing that the fund was set up to study,

Drew: But it seems to me that the bulk of birds that will be released, at least under normal circumstances have already been released, now they’re sitting on birds that are special cases, the window of opportunity has passed.

Dr. Remsen: Probably.  The opportunity is gone.  Let’s say you find out that 95% of the rehabbed birds die within the first month.  You think that’s going to stop the rehab people from getting out there next year? What it might do is cut down the funding for them, but the emotional response of trying to help those birds is not going to go away. As far as I’m concerned, if people want to spend their time and money rehabbing, every bird that they successfully rehab is great, but lets find out how to do it better.

Drew: I remember early on, there was some talk about captive breeding, etc.  Were you ever concerned on an immediate population level, were you ever worried that we would lose whole populations?

Dr. Remsen: Maybe a little, but no, actually I would say no.  I’m just a believer. I’ve seen it so many times.  The Brown Pelican, big huge bird, relatively slow reproducer, look at what happened to them here.  If the habitat is suitable, birds will saturate it, given enough generations and time. So I would have to say no, never been concerned about long-term population effects, maybe some short term, in terms of direct mortality.  I remain concerned about food and fish populations, and nest site availability, but not the direct mortality.

Drew:  With all of the effects that the clean up crews and abatement efforts had on beach nesting birds, do you think that the agencies dropped the ball on protecting some of these areas and colonies?

Dr. Remsen: Yes.  I think you could say that, but again, you’ve got to realize.  You were in the middle of that, you know, the whole organization, or disorganization of the whole thing, you know the command structure, and people making decisions on the fly.  I basically don’t fault anybody for anything.  I’m a believer in a sort of combination of chaos theory and catastrophe theory, and it takes a catastrophe like this to learn how to do it better the next time.  I hate to go back and Monday morning quarterback a lot of the decisions that were made, because I wasn’t there in the trailer at the time; you know, there’s a decision to make right now.  It would be really easy to go back and criticize a lot of those decisions, and some of them were really pretty dumb.  And you could say,” you know, why didn’t they call somebody and ask them their opinion, get some more feedback on this?” but then they would be criticized for not taking action fast enough, and they’re under stress, so I’m pretty forgiving on a lot of that stuff.  It’s easy for me to say, but if I had been down there seeing those guys bulldozing Plover nests and stuff like that, you know…  But that’s the emotional side of me, but try to get away from that, kind of big picture thing, cost benefit analysis type of thing. Pick your battles. I’d be lenient any way.  What I’m not lenient on is corruption or collusion, stuff like that.  I’m completely the opposite.

Drew: Do you feel like any of the national conservation organizations have stepped up to the plate during this disaster?

Dr. Remsen: I don’t have enough information to say for sure, and some of this data that is mysteriously proprietary, but I haven’t seen anything.  I have no evidence of anybody producing any information whatsoever. The ABA with their limited resources accomplished more in this oil spill than (other National Organizations) in terms of actually producing information and data, and getting the word out.  It’s incredible.  The comparison in efficiency is dramatic.  The money that ABA gave us to do those surveys, every single dollar of that goes toward producing data.  What birds are where and what percentage of them are oiled.  There isn’t a cent that doesn’t go into that.  You know for a few thousand dollars.  And we haven’t begun to use that.  We’ve got a long ways to go on it.  I don’t know how much money is going into doing these other things.  That’s the other thing. All of the data gathered from the ABA fund is public information.  It goes right into ebird and you can go on there right now and figure out what percentage of the birds are oiled and where, and we’re not just taking anybody’s data out there.  There are only a few people that we’re going to hire to go out there to do these surveys.  In a training session, you can’t inculcate someone with 20 years of field experience.  People are going to see oil where there’s none, or miss it when it’s there. Using those skilled observers at least we know we have the bird ID and numbers right.  And we will use the same observers over time so we can control for observer effect, and that’s what I worry about in these mass training sessions, is observer effect.  You know there’s so much noise(data) in there, especially if it’s subtle.  It’s one thing if the bird is covered in oil, but if it’s just staining it can be difficult to see.

Drew: One of my biggest concerns is the beachfront foragers, especially the Piping and Snowy Plovers.  Their populations are low enough that the threshold isn’t very high, for what could be potentially a massive effect on the near shore environment.  I want to recommend some active hazing in areas that remain heavily oiled. What do you think about hazing?

Dr. Remsen: I think it’s a great idea.  I don’t know anything about the effectiveness of it, but you know it would give someone on a three-wheeler a great mission!(laughter)  I don’t know how many times you have to chase a Piping Plover away before it actually gets out of there, you could be doubling back forever.

Drew: That’s the second part of the recommendation; to identify beaches that are relatively clean and designate them as sanctuaries, as sort of a refuge status and try and limit public access, at least for this winter.

Do you have any other recommendations, looking forward as to things that might help in terms of migration?

Dr. Remsen: No, well, this whole thing about migration I haven’t followed this, Well, I haven’t read too much about it, but I’m sure people jumped all over that whole “Short Stop” thing. You’re not going to shortstop a Sanderling.  The migratory Piping Plovers, what are you going to do?  That’s the habitat they want to go to. You’re absolutely dead on correct that it’s those splash zone, beach zone birds that are the ones you’re going to have to worry about, and in addition to the Plovers, you’ve got Sanderlings, Willets, Turnstones, and you’ve got major roosting areas for a lot of the Gulls and Terns, and I know they aren’t as sensitive, they don’t have the lack of margin for error, but that would be my second level of management concern.  I can’t think of anything offhand really.  I think that your idea, of herding them, but then again, how big are the remaining oiled areas?

Drew: They’re pretty small.  That’s the thing, if you do a flight over it, it becomes very obvious that this oil accumulated in pools on eddies and on points, which is where a lot of the gulls are roosting also, but the major heavy areas of concentration are in small areas, maybe a hundred yards by 20 yards, so it’s pretty feasible.

Dr. Remsen: So it’s feasible, well you have a better idea from your on the ground experience and over flights about the feasibility, but I like the idea of somehow just keeping those birds away, maybe with people, or noise makers, I don’t know what you’d use, but I think that’s the best you can do, just try and keep them away from there and hope they’ll go someplace else.  Certainly, the less time they spend there, the better. Period.  Even if it’s not a hundred percent effective it’s still a success.

Drew: I know that these oiled wildlife responders have hazing in their repertoire.

Dr. Remsen: They’ve obviously worked this out as much as anybody has, and if they’ve got protocols for this sort of thing, that’s where I would put my resources, to keep those Piping Plovers away from those kinds of beaches.

Drew: Do you think that deepwater drilling has any place in Louisiana? Obviously, the economy and the people seem to really think that it’s absolutely necessary.

Dr. Remsen: Well, (sighs) personally, if you really want to step back, I’m opposed to the use of fossil fuels period.  I mean I think all oil, I mean it’s all harmful, all of it.  Every single bit of it, whether it’s deepwater or in shore, everything about it sucks as far as I’m concerned, but as long as we’re not willing to bite the bullet, we’re the ones that are forcing deepwater drilling.  We’re the one’s that are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon thing because we’re willing to pay, no matter what for their products.

As far as, if I were emperor would I allow deepwater drilling after this? If it means degradation of the environment in the long term, no.  What about the fishermen? What about the shrimpers, and so on?  Who would I rather support?  If it comes to choosing people, I’ll take the Oystermen over the offshore oil industry any day.

Drew: Only two shrimpers went out from Grand Isle on opening day, and the media is saying that it’s because they don’t think there’s a market for Gulf shrimp, but everyone I’ve talked to, and the Houma Courier did an article on it, it’s because they wouldn’t feed it to their families, so they won’t bring it to market to feed to other people.

Dr. Remsen: Good for them.

Drew: I’m at a point where I just don’t understand where the motivation is for these corporate executives and corporate mandates that just serve to make more money at the planet’s expense? It’s not like in the end you can say that you won.  What could the possible motivation be?

Dr. Remsen: Well, if you’re an oil executive you can never have enough country club memberships to be satisfied.  That’s what we’re dealing with as far as I’m concerned.  Those people have unlimited greed.  It’s competition.  Who can have the most Mercedes.  I don’t know, that’s the new kings and queens of this plan.  I call it the “CEO-ocracy”. It’s the form of government we have.  I don’t know what’s going to happen. 

In some ways, I’m kind of glad that it happened, because it will open a lot of people’s eyes to the power of big oil.

The juxtaposition of all that media stuff that the oil is gone with photographs of the oil that’s still there.  The free press is our only hope, and people don’t like being deceived.  Those are the two ingredients that I think can work to counteract the “CEO-ocracy”.  The free press working to expose deceit and cover up because people hate that stuff.  They don’t like being lied to.  It’s a fundamental human thing.

Addendum to Part I: An Interview with LSU Ornithologist Dr. James Van Remsen About the Gulf Oil Disaster

E.J. Raynor sent me this list of research that has and is being done on waterbirds on the barrier islands of Louisiana.  E.J. conducted the first quantitative assessment of Louisiana barrier island waterbird use in the state's history for a Masters Degree at Nicholls State University, and has provided some details that were missing from the interview.

1) Dr. Aaron Pierce, E.J.'s advisor, is continuing research on waterbirds of the Isles Dernieres Barrier Islands Refuge  (IDBIR) in Terrebonne Parish with new graduate students.

2) Dr. Paul Leberg at University of Louisiana-Lafayette has a Ph.D. student, Scott Walter, that has been studying the Brown Pelicans on the IDBIR for four years.

3) CecIlia Leumas conducted her Masters research on Trinity Island with nest success of Least Terns and attempting to attract Skimmers and Royal Terns to nest on Trinity with decoys

4) E.J. was not Cecilia's technician but studied the seabird demography, productivity, habitat requirements, and mammalian predator activity on all the IDBIR: Wine, Trinity, Whiskey, and Raccoon Islands.

5) Aerial Surveys have been conducted see:

Michot, T.C., C.W. Jeske, J.C. Mazourek, W.G. Vermillion, and R.S. Kemmerer. 2003.  Atlas and census of wading bird and seabird nesting colonies in south Louisiana, 2001. Report No. 32. Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program. Thibodaux, Louisiana.

and references therein...

Part I: An Interview with LSU Ornithologist Dr. James Van Remsen About the Gulf Oil Disaster

LSU has always been a major center for American Ornithology, and has captured the imagination of the birding community with color and intrigue.  We often associate LSU with tales of discovery and hardship in remote South American mountains where LSU researchers have worked endlessly to decipher the natural history and taxonomic relationships of birds and bird communities in the exotic lands of the tropics.  Dr. James Van Remsen currently carries this ornithological torch.  In this interview, Drew Wheelan and Dr. James Van Remsen, professor at LSU's department of Biological Sciences and Curator of Birds in the Museum of Natural Sciences talk candidly about the BP oil disaster and its effects on birds in the Gulf, and LSU's role in studying the catastrophe.

Drew: How long have you been at LSU?

Dr. Remsen: 32 years.  I think this is my 33^rd I don’t know if this is my 32^nd or 33^rd I lose track

Drew: You’ve been here for 32 years, you’ve obviously seen some smaller oil spills, has LSU ever taken any sort of lead role in research or monitoring birds before?

Dr. Remsen: Not to my knowledge. Not Birds.   There are a lot of people that have research programs that have studied the effects of contaminates on ecoysystems, including oil on salt marsh systems, but not directly with birds. LSU is pretty well positioned here to study this.  There’s a big group of people here that study marine organisms from phytoplankton to birds. 

Drew: Historically you haven’t done anything with birds here, related to spills?

Dr. Remsen: Well, we haven’t really ever had anything like this happen before. You know, there’s always a little bit.  The studies have been from some well that leaks in the marsh, but there hasn’t ever been anything like this, anything that would have made somebody's news before, to my knowledge.

Drew: Your programs have always been geared toward the tropics.  Seeing this kind of spill in your backyard, does this make you want to change focus at all, and change the direction of study more toward a local focus?

 

Dr. Remsen: Well, for me there’s no chance that I would redirect my studies. It’s just not what I like to do. I do what I like to do, it’s one of the reasons why I am an academic.  That kind of research would be considered applied research, not basic research, and it’s really the perview of our renewable resources people, they’re the ones that would study something like that from a research point of view, not us.  We have a specimen based research program that’s based largely in South America, and to some degree Indonesia, well the East Indies and Borneo, so this is a huge leap. Now, the only reason that we are involved is that Steve Cardiff, Donna Dittman and myself are working on a book of the birds of Louisiana, and we’ve been working on this project for a long time.  So this has become the center of Louisiana bird records and Louisiana Ornithology, so even though our primary research is not in Louisiana, on the other hand, as ornithologists we’re probably more involved in the State’s ornithological scene than ornithologists in most other states.  We’ve got strong ties to the Louisana Birding community.  We’ve got the LA Bird Resource Center, and so on, but that’s more of a secondary, what do you call, a community interaction dimension of our program than a research interaction per say. 

When I think of research, it’s thinking of questions and answering questions.  It’s why. It’s detective work, and the stuff I do in LA, I mean there’s always detective work on what is the real status of species XYand Z and all that kind of thing, but I think it’s more in terms of compliation of information and provoking others to find out the details, so oil and gulf coast is brand new for us.  Steve and Donna, they’re the ones that are doing all of the field work, and they’ve had a long term interest in Gulf Coast and Louisiana Shorebirds and Pelagics and that sort of thing.

Drew: I know Donna Dittman was in communication early on about developing some sort of pelagic bird monitoring program associated with the spill, but it really seems like wildlife managers that have been involved in the response haven't really tapped into the local pool of experts available to them here

Dr. Remsen: I don’t really blame them.  I mean, if you were to google Gulf Coast Bird Research, you wouldn’t find our names.  We haven’t published papers on Gulf Coast shorebirds and pelagics, or anything like that, so it’s sort of here say, word of mouth sort of thing, so I don’t blame them at all.

Drew: I guess I’m thinking in terms of EJ Raynor, having studied all of the Barrier Island Tern colonies, and people like that.  I would just think that maybe there would be some communication with these scientists.

Dr. Remsen: Well, there’s also a student in Wildlife and Fisheries program named Cecilia Leumes, and EJ Raynor worked for her, at least I think he did.  She studies the colonies on Isles Deneirs, and I haven’t heard anything of or about her during this whole thing. 

Drew: Before this, would she have had a field season out there?

Dr. Remsen: I think she may be done with her field work, but I’m not sure.   She’s a student of Frank Rower’s, and wildlife and fisheries, but even in that program, there’s no one working on Gulf Coast Birds. I guess the sort of sad thing is that in Louisiana, or elsewhere, there’s nobody doing any studies of Gulf Coast breeding bird populations, which are huge. I mean, this is a fantastic place for birds.  The numbers of birds along the Gulf Coast is unparalleled.

Drew: That’s why I was so surprised when I got here, and met Steve and Donna, and they said there’s basically no baseline data to go off of.

Dr. Remsen: I mean, we’ve got our winter bird, and summer bird atlas stuff, but that’s it.  Part of the problem is because of access.  You know, it’s not like you can just go out there.  You know, in order to study those birds on Isle Deniers, Cecilia had to build a little house out there.  Wildlife and fisheries people built her a little camp, I mean that’s how it had to work.  Access is a real impedement here.

Drew: So, when this spill first happened, what were your biggest concerns?

Dr. Remsen: Well, my biggest concern was not direct mortality to the birds, because  I am a believer in population resiliency.  You know, unless you wipe them out completely, they’re going to come back.  Some more slowly than others, and especially in seabirds. Sea bird biology, Gulf Coast breeding biology in general is geared toward catastrophe.  You know entire breeding seasons can be wiped out by hurricanes, or one Raccoon getting on an island.  It’s a precarious event.  And in fact, it is in seabirds in general.  They live a long time, so it’s the breeding adults that are important for the population, not the actual offspring of any particular year.  Their demography sort of relies on occasional successful breeding, rather than constant output or anything like that.  You know the Brown Pelican story here in LA, can tell you how fast these things can bounce back.  Brown Pelicans were extirpated from LA, and now there are thousands and thousands breeding here.

Drew: There must be 20,000 here in the state.

Dr. Remsen: I know, it’s amazing, it goes from zero to 20,000, I mean that’s the sad thing is that we don’t really know what the number is.  We’re trying to fix that right now, with ABA money.  We’re trying to scramble right now, we never thought there was a problem before.  You know hindsight is 20/20. 

My immediated concern was ecosystem destruction.  Like a lot of people, I was more worried about waves of sludge continuing to wash into the marshes and killing the marshes, and then that accelerating coastal erosion.  That was my big concern. Not the birds per se, but the whole marsh ecosystem, being jeopardized, well, you know more about this than I do.  The wave action.  It’s unbelievable how important the marsh vegetation is for the integrity of the coastline, that was my big concern, an immediated acceleration of loss of those coastal communities, and that doesn’t seem to be the case, and for that I’m tremendously relieved.

Drew: Grand terre has lost 20 feet of beach in just the past two months on the eastern tip of the island.

Dr. Remsen: Now, I’ve heard this second hand, maybe you can confirm it, but even in places where the vegetation has been destroyed, there’s green stuff sprouting out already?

Drew: I have seen that, even some of the Mangroves that lost their leaves initially are growing new leaves in places.

Dr. Remsen: Again, the whole ecosystem is disturbance adapted.  Not oil disturbance, but perturbation is an essential component of this Gulf Coast system.  If you look at it over centuries, just in terms of hurricanes alone, you’ve got a dynamic ecosystem that has a lot of resiliency, so now, I think that worry has subsided a little. At first I thought this was going to be an incredible environmental catastrophe. Now, I’m much more relaxed about it.  My lingering concern is ecosystem perturbation at the molecular level almost, you know from contaminants destroying the phytoplankton, or zooplankton, or benthic organisms, you know something like that, and it’s stuff that I don’t know anything about, so it’s just this vague fear, that especially the chemicals from the dispersants is going to have some impact.  I think that’s the main danger now.  You know, some of the stuff that you’ve posted and others have posted about the Army Corps of Engineers and clean up workers and beach barriers.  That stuff may have done more immediate damage than the actual oil did, that might be exaggerating, but maybe…  But even there, you know one major storm on Elmer’s Island or even on Grand Isle would wipe them all out. What it represents is just these futile humans trying to hold back the tides, literally, I mean what a waste of time and energy, but even that, I suspect, and maybe I’m just a naïve optimist, but I suspect that two years from now you won’t see a trace of it.

A major winter storm can really rearrange those beaches. 

I want to make sure that you know, as far as the birds, the populations of birds, nothing makes me madder than seeing some bird covered in oil washed up on the beach, or a crab, some poor crab.  It just really gets me.  I want to make clear that at least at the gut level that really gets me.

Dispersed Oil Found in the Gulf in Navarre, Florida. How Predictable.

Last week I had the opportunity to accompany Coastal Geologist Rip Kirby from the University of Southern Florida on a search mission.  The quarry was oil, and Rip was confident that we would find it.  Spurred on by the latest report from the Coast Guard that there was very little oil off of the Gulf Coast, where they found only two of 5,000 samples to contain oil, Rip was determined to test a hypothesis.  Rip tells me that actually only 10 samples were taken in 5,000 square feet, but the information from the above report says otherwise.  I think that the news report likely got its numbers mixed up when writing the story. The Coast Guard tests were done in random locations, but just like the oil as it hits the shore, this near neutrally buoyant dispersed oil settles in very predictable locations.  Rip hypothesizes that this oil is gathering in depressions along the ocean floor, and we set out to test that theory.

As we exited the Destin harbor we came across an area of orange, dispersed oil floating on the surface of the water.  I was taken aback as I hadn't seen that type of oil in almost a month, and to see it so far to the East was a little baffling.  In fact, that oil has come ashore this weekend in Southern Louisiana confirming a report from a friend that had been briefed by Unified Command about a  1 mile long by 100 foot wide swath of oil just off of the Louisiana coast last Thursday night.  This oil has now come to rest on 16 miles of shoreline in Plaquemines Parish, and in Barataria Bay, as there are virtually no skimmers left in the water to combat this oil.  

Back to Florida.  We ran a transect in 40 feet of water to the west out of Destin looking for underwater gullies where we would look for the oil.  In our first transect we didn't find any obvious depressions, but there was a small concave area that was worth a free dive.  This first site was not quite what we were looking for in terms of contour, and appeared to be clean.
Geologist, Rip Kirby dives in to check out the bottom.   

We then started our North/South transects, and marked a waypoint at the first depression that we hit.  We continued to cruise a little bit to see if we might find something better but returned to the first location that looked good on the sonar.  The divers geared up, and I actually went for a swim, maybe not the smartest thing I've done as more science is gathered about the toxicity of the dispersants to humans.

The plan was for the divers to move along in a row, down the depression looking for oil.  They had a buoy with them that would show their position so we could pick them up after the 40 minute dive.  We didn't have to go anywhere, as the buoy didn't move.  As soon as they hit the bottom they saw that it was much darker than was normal, and noticed that all of the Sand Dollars were a dark blackish brown.  When they resurfaced Rip described an area devoid of life, with shells of dead crustaceans along the bottom.  Besides the one Remora that came to check the divers out, no other fish were seen on the dive, and yes of course, the darker substrate was oil.  By oil we mean a Corexit/oil mixture.
Rip with his sample jars at the site of the second dive. 

The samples are in the lab, but Rip has figured out a way of identifying the dispersants using UV light.  Both forms of Corexit fluoresce in this type of light, and all of the samples showed both forms of dispersant, and smelled of petroleum.  A sample was also taken of the water itself, and when it settled out, a centimeter thick layer of Corexit 9500 settled out in the bottom of the jar.
Student Diver, Kyle Saleeby holds up one of the  discolored Sand Dollars for inspection.

As we were preparing to head back to port we noticed a Greater Shearwater sitting on the water.  It didn't fly and was very close, in fact, it was swimming toward us.  One attempt to rescue the bird was made, in which it flew weakly in a labored manner, and it was decided that we were not equipped to rescue the bird in our large boats without any nets.  The bird like most birds seen these days did not exhibit any obvious sign of oiling, but it did have severely worn flight feathers.  It was molting symmetrically, and the older yet to be molted secondaries, primaries and rectrices were worn straight to the shaft.  I have never seen this type of feather wear in a Greater Shearwater before, and it is exactly what we are witnessing in many of the Gulls, Terns and Pelicans along the Gulf Coast.  The theory is that as the birds preen their feathers with fervor to try and remove oil they are doing a lot of damaged to their feathers.
The Greater Shearwater that we found, and had to leave behind. 

When we finally got back to the hotel, Rip used his light on a couple of samples I had in my truck, and ion the process showed that everything I have in the back of my truck is contaminated with dispersants.
This boot was last worn on July 23rd on Grand Terre Island.  The Orange is Coerexit 9500, and the magenta is the more toxic 9527.  Both have not broken down in two months, as well as the oil that remains on the shoes.

Raccoon Island Revisited

Raccoon Island is a major seabird rookery in the mouth of Terrebonne Bay.  It is the last island in the chain of barrier islands that stretches west  from the mouth of the Mississippi River, and is home to thousands of seabirds including Brown Pelicans, Black Skimmers, Terns and Laughing Gulls.  It was also the site of oil washing ashore in early July.  There was only one layer of boom around the island which was not anchored well at all, and the winds and surf which drove the oil in, also pushed the boom far up onto the island, and right through the Royal Tern colony, and into the mangroves in which the Brown Pelicans nest.  

A Cornell film crew led by Marc Dantzker was the first to witness the catastrophe on this island, and New Orleans photographer Jerry Moran was quick on the scene and captured the gruesome effects of the oil and the poor response.  On a subsequent trip in August, Jerry and an independent research team travelled there to document the destruction and take samples from the dead birds, many of which did not appear to be oiled.  What they found were freshly expired birds, and many more along the shore that had not been collected.  With this in mind, and the newly discovered dead birds of Madoto Island close by, I travelled to Raccoon Island on September 5th with Shawn Carey from the Massachusetts Audubon Society and local wildlife photographers Charlie Bush and Darlene Eschete.  We wanted to investigate if the mortality on the island was from past events, or if there was ongoing death among the birds there.

We had been under way, zooming through the marshes and out into the bay long before the sun rose over the spartina.  Shrimpers were just hitting the docks in Bayou Dularge as we passed in the fresh morning air, and a group of Tri-colored Herons passed over in the dawn crepuscule on their way to their foraging grounds.  It took about 45 minutes to get out to the gulf and to this last island, and as we approached from the west, thousands of Royal Terns were foraging along the southern shore of a sand spit island just west of Raccoon.  I counted approximately 8,000 birds in the air all around us as we approached our destination.
Hundreds of Pelicans Fill the Air on the Western End of Raccoon Island 

Raccoon Island is a large island, perhaps three miles in length, and has a wide sandy beach in the front, with a swath of Black Mangroves and marsh on the bayside.  The gulls, terns and Skimmers nest on the beach, while the thousands of Brown Pelicans and wading birds utilize the stubby mangroves to build their flimsy stick nests in.  I had not seen a Pelican chick for sometime on any of the other nesting colonies and assumed that breeding was all done, which made me a little more relaxed about stepping foot on the island.  As we landed some of the birds roosting on the eastern tip of the island rose to the air, but quickly settled back down.

Darlene was first off the boat, and the first thing she saw was a pile of feathers from a dead gull.  It looked like it had been there for a long time, as the bones were bleached, and the Ghost Crabs had not left any bit of flesh behind.
The Remains of a Laughing Gull Outside of a Ghost Crab Hole   

Stepping onto the island, I quickly saw that tarballs and older pancake sized patties were all along the shoreline.  Some of the mangroves on the front edge were stained with oil.  As we made our way to the eastern tip we discovered a mat of oil pushed high up on the island, almost to the dune grass.  I dug down around its edges to see if there was more oil covered by sand, but it appeared isolated.  In fact, compared to the damage witnessed elsewhere, the volume of oil found on the island was much less, and appeared to have made landfall in one or two single events, and not throughout time.
A Mat of Weathered Oil Continues to Contaminate one of the Most Important Seabird Habitats in Louisiana 

As happy as we were to see the smaller volume of oil on the shores of one of Louisiana's most important colonies, we were distressed at the fact that the oil still remained.  Granted, nesting has just recently finished up here in the Gulf, so crews have not been able to get out there, but it appeared that very few tarballs were continuing to wash up, so that if cleaned from the oil it is likely that this island would remain oil free.  The amount of oil on this beach might seem trivial in comparison to the millions upon millions of gallons still out there, when you take into account the importance of this island as bird habitat and the fact that if a commercial fisherman discharged one one thousandth of the amount of oil still left on the shores of Raccoon Island they would face serious fines and perhaps even criminal charges it's infuriating that more is not being done.   
One of Five Piping Plovers Seen on the Shores of Raccoon Island

As we began to head west along the island two Piping Plovers scurried by on the shoreline, right through remaining tar patties and added an exclamation point to what I was feeling.  The allocation of resources during this catastrophe has been very poorly managed, as hundreds of people clean spotless white sand beaches while other areas remain ignored, even vitally important bird habitat. We saw five Piping Plovers in a half mile stretch of oiled beach, as well as many other migrant shorebirds.  We estimated between 3-4,000 Brown Pelicans roosting along the shores as well.

While I was glad to see that more oil had not contaminated the islands in this western part of the chain, it was disheartening to say the least that nothing was being done.  Just a handful of independent journalists and biologists have witnessed this area during the catastrophe, and again, one has to wonder if the resources aren't being allocated purposefully in more visible areas, at the expense of perhaps more important places.  It becomes less of a question if you look at this document leaked to me be a spill responder , "place special emphasis on remaining visible in areas of heavy public use"!!!!!
On the island, we also encountered a dead Bottle-nosed Dolphin, which Darlene had discovered on a trip with the World Animal Awareness Society 9 days prior.  After calling it in to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, they must have been on the island since, as they had marked the dolphin with a florescent, "LDWF". It appeared that a small tissue sample had been taken from the throat of the Dolphin, but no necropsy was performed.  I'm no mortician, but if the death was spill related, I imagine that the causes would be visible in the vital organs, and not from accumulated toxicity in the flesh of the animal.  It would be interesting to know if this animal was counted in the official tally, or if they're going to just rely on formulas to determine how many dolphins were killed by the spill.
 A Bottle-nosed Dolphin found dead on the shores of raccoon Island

The Washing of the Oil

I went out again with Leanne Sarco, the Interpretive Ranger for Grand Isle State Park as she went out to Zone 15, on the eastern tip of Grand Isle, Louisiana.  Zone 15 has had oil sitting on its shores now for 13 weeks, and is where Leanne with her revolving volunteer army has been rescuing Hermit Crabs for over half of that time.  This day, the tide was high, so the main bar of exposed and accumulated oil was submerged, and was nearly covered with sand, and not quite noticeable to someone who might not know about the area's history.

As we pulled up to the beach with our crew which included Rachel McKay Laskowski and Craig Hill from the World Animal Awareness Society, hundreds of birds flew up from the main contaminated shore.  Five species of Tern, Black Skimmers, Gulls, and shorebirds, which included a few Red Knots made up the group.  Migration is in full swing now, and shorebirds in the front yard as well as bright flecks of yellow plumage flitting through the live oaks is the order of business on the barrier islands of the Gulf Coast right now.
Short-billed Dowitchers in the front yard, 9/2/10. 

One pattern that has been emerging through my observations here is that just like the heaviest of the oil, roosting birds seem to prefer natural points along the front edges of the islands as well as the sandy coves on the inside.  From the air you can see that the oil tended to accumulate most in very predictable ways, usually heaviest on the eastern edge of points and spits on the gulf side of the islands.  It also wrapped around and came to rest in larger concentrations in small eddies and coves on the insides and in the channels that separate the islands.  Unfortunately, the points are also where birds tend to congregate as well.
Thick oil, just under the sand in Zone 15, Grand Isle, Louisiana 9/3/10. 

Many of these localities received many thousands of gallons of oil during the last weeks of May through the middle of June and continue to see higher concentrations of tarballs arriving on shore daily.  The clean up crews were so poorly organized and understaffed that the vast majority of this oil still remains, and has been covered in many cases by layers of sand.  The effort to clean the shoreline was in no way, shape or form adequate to deal with the severity and immediacy of the problem as the oil piled up on the shores of the Gulf, though BP had over a month to prepare.  The technology to remove this oil with vacuum trucks exists and was employed in very limited instances, but never attempted on any of these beach sites, even in areas accessible by motor vehicle.  And so the oil remains.
 Vacuum trucks like these can pump the emulsified oil out of the water in a fast and effective manner.  

Leanne told me that the Park staff had just heard about an application for a permit by BP to surf wash the contaminated sand of the park.  Some of this sand has several layers of very thick crude in it, not light contamination.  So, today they were gathering all of the contaminated sand dug up by the one crew working with shovels and the three "zamboni" sand collecting machines and piling it in great mountains, which if the permit goes through will be pushed toward the shoreline where the wave action will magically remove the oil from the ecosystem.  This is in spite of the fact that they have a centrifuge which they have been decontaminating sand with since mid-July, that supposedly can clean 50 tons of sand per hour.  Coast Guard chief Robert Laura on July 4th told me that it can handle more sand than they can bring in and will return the sand cleaner than when it came in.  Perhaps it's just cheaper to push it into the ocean.
Tarballs on Grand Isle beach on 9/3/10.  This oil was scooped up by the zamboni and piled for the surf washing.

Since the media is no longer here, no one is asking the questions, and BP seems to have the run of things.  I have been in a deep depression for the last two weeks coming to terms with the fact that the nation's attention span doesn't seem to allow for any more real reporting about the spill.  One of the main problems is that to solve this issue involves confronting our very own personal behaviors and habits, and it makes it a much harder thing to deal with day in and day out.  We just want it to be rosey and good, and for the birds to live happily ever after, but that's not the case. 

Unfortunately, the easy story, the one that hurts less, the one that those with most to gain are telling us, the one that has not been investigated from desks in D.C. and New York are the ones we hear in the media.  This perpetuation of the idea that some how the Gulf is just going to be ok, though most of the limited available science is pointing to the contrary is not acceptable.   It allows people who would otherwise question the situation to believe what the BP PR machine is telling the public, a machine that from day one has evaded the truth, dodged questions, hid evidence and did so in a potentially criminal manner.  These things were wrong, but when this same story is re-canted by the media and even environmental advocate groups the repercussions are far more serious.
Oil in Zone 15, Grand Isle State Park, September 3, 2010