Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Last night, Canadian TV’s news staff got on the phone with Richard Charter, offshore drilling expert and senior policy adviser at Defenders of Wildlife, to hear what he had to say about the explosion of the Vermilion 380, an offshore drilling platform owned by Mariner Energy of Houston.

After monitoring the aftermath of the explosion almost 100 miles south of Louisiana, Richard said, “Everyone is relieved that 13 workers were rescued safely from the waters, but in terms of environmental consequences it’s too early to tell.”

He told CTV of the company that owned the rig, “Mariner Energy since 2006 has had nine reported incidents in the Gulf of Mexico, including four fires and one blowout. There are these smaller events consistently throughout the Gulf of Mexico that we don’t usually hear about because they don’t occur – by coincidence – on the same day, today, that BP experts were removing the capping stack from the Deepwater Horizon Macondo well.”

The current moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would not have affected this rig, drilling at only 340 feet. Richard said, “The event today of course highlights that there are inherent risks of accidents in offshore drilling activities in any water depth.”

“We need to either make this activity safe or decide there are going to be  parts of hte planet that are too environmentally sensitive to go ahead with high risk drilling – the Arctic is of course one of  them. We’re getting some hard lessons as a society here.”

See the full interview here.

What you can do:

Write a letter to the editor. The House of Representatives has passed legislation to help protect our wildlife by improving safety and accountability in offshore drilling, but the Senate has yet to act. Help encourage your senators to act by writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.

Support our work. Your tax-deductible donation will help us protect sea turtles and other wildlife from the dangers of reckless offshore drilling.

Sometime before midnight yesterday, our expedition’s principal investigator, Ryan Smith, jumped up: “Hey, come look at this!” A monitor in the dry lab prints out continuous readings in lines of different colors for sea surface temperature, salinity, oxygen and chlorophyll. The blue line for salinity has just nose-dived, plummeting more than two parts per thousand. This was not evidence yet of oil; rather, it told us that we had run into the outfall of the Mississippi River, a 20-30 foot thick lens of freshwater sitting on top of the saltier Gulf. We were getting close…

After a fitful night’s sleep, I awake to find absolutely everyone energized and bustling. Normally, the ship’s crew works on a 4-hours-on, 8-hours-off cycle, whereas the science team works 12 and then rests 12. Today, however, everyone was up, and it was easy to see why. High on the flying bridge, I could see the Deepwater Horizon surrounded by its myriad support platforms and tenders. It looked like a distant skyline from a small city. At breakfast, one member of the science team was near tears describing first looks at the massive amounts of oil. Another describes with wide eyes a large “oil pancake” that she found during the night watch.

Our first station is 8 nautical miles east-southeast of the Deepwater Horizon. The Gulf here swarms with traffic. On the bridge, the radio crackles constantly with instructions, requests and warnings. A seismic survey vessel advises us to maintain at least two nautical miles of distance away from them. Helicopters fly by, and a few small planes buzz low overhead. Scanning the horizon, I count at least 37 vessels. These research and support ships are clustered so thickly together, even the radar console gives up and just stacks them all on top of each other.

When I looked down below the Nancy Foster, I see a thick sheen everywhere, in every direction, as far as I can see. The smell is perceptible but not over-powering; it reminds me of the odor of fuel and water from an outboard motor on a lake. The water looks un-naturally opaque, almost like thin paint, and I see dirty foam tinged yellow-brown floating on the surface.

Because of contamination, the science team and crew confer on how to deploy the CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) rosette over the side without fouling it with crude oil. The high-pressure fire hose is deemed the best means to rinse the instrument as it comes back on board. Ultimately, though, everyone is resigned to losing this $107,000 instrument. NOAA chiefs have declared that the data to be gained are worth the loss of this and another vital piece of gear, the $70,000 MOCNESS trawl.

I stand an hours-long morning watch to see if I can find any seabirds here. It is a search in vain. I see no birds, no marine mammals and no large fish. Finally, just before noon, I see a bright green clump, no more than 10-12 inches in diameter, floating just below the surface. It is a plant, washed far offshore by the Mighty Miss from some land or coastal ecosystem. And swimming underneath it, defying fate, are a dozen small fish no bigger than minnows.

The Washington Post reports:

BP said Thursday that it has stopped oil from leaking out of its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico. The gusher has been throttled for the first time since the April 20 blowout on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon.

Kent Wells, BP’s senior vice president of exploration and production, told reporters that a new capping mechanism shut off the flow of crude from the Macondo well at 3:25 p.m. EDT. He made the announcement after engineers gradually shut off valves to test the pressure. The engineers are monitoring the pressure to see whether the new cap and the well bore hold.

BP began the pressure test Thursday afternoon on the blown-out well, ending two days of delays, one caused by government fears that the test could backfire and the other by a leak discovered in part of the well’s new cap.

“Although it cannot be assured, it is expected that no oil will be released to the ocean during the test,” BP said in a guarded statement announcing the start of the procedure. “Even if no oil is released during the test, this will not be an indication that oil and gas flow from the wellbore has been permanently stopped.”

Read the full Washington Post story  or see CNN’s live video feed of the capped oil well.

Photo courtesy of Krista Schlyer/Defenders of Wildlife

AP reports that almost one-third of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico is now closed to commercial and recreational fishing. As of 6 p.m. EDT Tuesday, nearly 76,000 square miles, more than 31% of federal Gulf waters, are off limits.

These gulf closures can leave fishermen with nowhere to turn. Shrimp boat captain Ronald Polkey tells Reuters, “All my life, that’s what I do. That’s my living. My Daddy, my brother, we’re all commercial fishermen … . I don’t know nothing else.”

According to the American Sportsfishing Association, should a worse case scenario occur and the entire Gulf of Mexico be closed to recreational fishing, there would be a per day $8.6 million dollar loss in recreational fishing trip expenditures for purchases of bait and tackle, food and beverages, ice, gas and lodging.

The Washington Post reports on the delicate balance between oil and fishing, two industries that have helped to shape many Gulf cities. Lousiana shrimper Joey Toups says, “It’s the best fishing in the world here because we have so many reefs.”

Oil is not the only contaminant worrying fishermen in the Gulf. The Southern Shrimper Alliance worries that chemical dispersants used to treat the spill could put the entire Gulf seafood industry at risk.

Anxious to make ends meet, many fishermen are now employed in clean-up efforts throughout the region. But CNN reports the dangers of exposure to the spill, such as those experienced by fisherman John Wunstell Jr., who was hospitalized after becoming ill while cleaning up oil in the Gulf.

Alaska's Beaufort Sea, courtesy of NOAA

For most of us, the ocean touches something deep within, and carries at least a bit of a spiritual connotation.  We remember the first time that, as small children, we saw the glimmer of the sea, we were mesmerized by the waves, we wondered at the fragile and unusual wildlife.  We carry salt water in our veins, so it not unexpected that we should empathize with the ocean itself, as if it heals us when we most need healing, and we hear it when it’s lure calls us home to the things that really matter in our lives. Read the full story