One Year of Louisiana Oil Slick

Barely a year after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the Louisiana coast, this is how Bay Jimmy has fared, about 60 kilometers south of New Orleans. Oil has been washing up there since at least June, reports Capt. Zach Mouton, who took us and a team of ecologists from the Gulf Restoration Network to survey the damage.

All along the sullied coastline, the only visible measure of protection seems to be propane cannons, to scare off the birds and prevent them from getting bogged down in oil. Every few seconds, they sound a dull, gloomy tone, which provides a nice soundtrack to the drama.

Half an hour further by boat, on Grand Terre Island, the oil has seeped into the old vaulted cellars of Fort Livingston, constructed beginning in 1834 to protect New Orleans. Traces of oil are clearly seen on the cave walls. Jonathan Henderson, the guide from the GRN, used a stick to mop up an oily-smelling black paste. It wasn’t too strong of a smell, but the aroma resembled fresh asphalt or a gas station as it approached our noses.

Tar pellets littered the beach around Fort Livingston. The GRN experts pointed out the freshest ones, which could have come from either the Macondo wells drilled by BP after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, or from another spill. In March, an old, unused Anglo-Suisse well started leaking — a well which the company had supposedly sealed. This is a further reminder of how frequent oil spills are in the Gulf of Mexico. Last year’s accident was not exceptional because it happened, but instead because of its severity and the size of the well. In some places around Fort Livingston, oil mixed in with the sand. It had the appearance and consistency of homemade chocolate cake, but still smelled like oil. “The older oil is definitely from the BP spill,” explained Henderson. “And we don’t really see any cleanup crews from BP like they show on TV commercials. This place is abandoned, away from public view, so they don’t do anything.”*

Still, it’s misleading to only show places sullied by the oil slick. As BP’s former CEO, Tony Hayward, said last year (with worse intentions), “the Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean,” and the amount of oil being dumped in is “tiny” compared to the volume of water being churned around. We had every chance on our boat ride of not seeing any of the decimated coastline.

On Queen Bess Island, the nesting brown pelicans gave off the feeling of a Hitchcock film. The swarm of flying birds seemed to retain perfect dominion over their lands.

In Venice — at less than 80 kilometers away from the rig explosion, the nearest place to the accident — the fishermen proudly displayed their magnificent blue crabs and sheepshead fish that they have fished and eaten all throughout the past year, in waters quite close to the exploded rig.

Below, Matt O’Brien, owner of four fishing warehouses in Venice, showed off a sheepshead fish in his refrigerated truck.

To finish our tour, Capt. Zach Mouton took us from the sullied coasts closest to New Orleans to several small fishing villages that are now sinking into the swamp.

But this is not BP’s fault. Here, the diking of the Mississippi is to blame; it limits sediment dispersion to a few hollowed-out channels used by the entire oil industry and to hurricanes, like Katrina, which occasionally devastate the region. These factors have all contributed to Louisiana’s sinking swamps over the last century, which even now are creeping up on New Orleans. Our boat’s GPS used maps up to 30 years old, and indicated land where our widened eyes only saw blue sea drowning the land underwater. This house will most likely also complete its dive very soon. This phenomenon is even more serious than last year’s oil slick accident, according to fishermen and scientists alike. But it lacks spectacle, and there’s no rich British oil company to indict for the crime.

*Editor’s note: This quote, while accurately translated, could not be verified.