From the Shores of Louisiana — Crane Rescue

by Jon Bowermaster on

Barataria Bay, Louisiana – 6:50 a.m.: We’d been on the water for more than two hours already and had seen a particularly haunting sunrise thanks to a partial lunar eclipse by the time we reached the edge of Cat Island.

Marsh grass covers the muddy island, located about fifteen miles west of Sulphur Grove in Plaquemine Parish. The island is nearly identical to a couple hundred other unoccupied islands in the bay, except for the thousands of birds that call it home these days, the height of breeding season. As we watch from the opposite side of a pair of orange and yellow booms that circle the island, attempting to keep the oil sloshing around the bay from reaching its edges, terns and egrets, herons and cranes fly on and off the island noisily.

Minus the ongoing oil-gusher this would have been an idyllic early-morning bird watching event. Instead, binoculars and cameras are trained on the birds, trying to identify just how oil-soaked they are. Chicks are just being born and the adults spend their days flying out to pick up food; every time they dive they are at risk of an oil soaking.

“See that egret balanced on the top of the grass?” asks P.J. Hahn. “The one that looks grey? That’s a white egret. It is supposed to be all-white, not muddy brown. That bird is oil soaked.” His sun-streaked blonde hair make Hahn look more California surfer than Louisiana politico, but every weekend since the gushing began he’s been out on and above the bays, collecting data and images. Director of the Plaquemines Parish Coastal Zone Management Department his deep tan has been earned from long days patrolling on the bay.

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07:10 a.m.: We have been trolling around the island slowly, looking for evidence of oil on the island or birds when just behind us a scrawny looking bird emerges as if from the deep, his beak and feet clawing for purchase on the boom. He’s oil-soaked – the worst we’ve seen — and struggling to get to the other side of the boom and to the island.

07:20 a.m.: We manage to reach the bird before it can clear the boom and P.J. grips it behind the wings to keep it from flying off. A couple weeks before he’d been out with National Geographic photographer Joel Satore and had a similar wrestling match with an oil-soaked pelican, a much bigger and stronger bird.

This one – a young heron or crane, so badly oiled it’s impossible to tell for sure – is lucky that we got him. If he’d made to the other side of the boom he’d be a goner; there’d be no rescuing and he’d quickly die from oil suffocation. I ask P.J. what we can do with the frightened bird now that we’ve got him. Bird in one hand, cell phone in the other, he calls the personal number of a friend who works with the Louisiana Fish and Wildlife Department, the agency charged with overseeing oiled critters. No answer.

“It’s too early on a Saturday morning. I’ll wait until eight o’clock and try him again.”

08:05: P.J.’s not having any luck reaching his friend, so we motor up to a nearby boat full of workers laying boom. They shout out the toll free number they’d been given for wildlife rescue — 866.557.1401.

P.J. punches in the number and the phone rings for a full minute, answered by a woman … in Houston.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m P.J. Hahn, calling from the Plaquemines Parish government, to report that we’ve found an oil-soaked bird and would like to turn it over to the proper authorities.”

“Yes, P.J., like pajamas, yes, that’s right, ma’am.”

What ensues is a ten-minute long conversation; he fills us in on her side as she puts him repeatedly on hold to ask questions of a manager. He explains repeatedly that he’s calling from Louisiana, that we’re in the middle of a bay, in a boat, and that we’ve got a badly injured bird that needs help.

He repeats our GPS coordinates to her, two, three, four times.

“Yes ma’am, I’m calling from Louisiana.”

Covering the mouthpiece with his hand, he explains that she’s just asked him if there is a restaurant nearby that might serve as a meeting with wildlife experts. “Ma’am, there is no Burger King, no McDonald’s out here in the middle of the bay,” he explains, his frustration growing. Captain Sal Gagliano, who’s driving the boat this morning, says he was out a week earlier with officials from the National Wildlife Federation who placed a similar call and were asked for the closest “cross street.”

08:20 a.m.: “Now she’s advising me to note our location and put the bird back in the water. What is she thinking? That bird will be dead in a couple hours.”

08:25: Unconvinced the telephone operator has understood where we are, or even exactly what we’re calling about, P.J. suggests we head towards Grand Isle where an onshore rescue station is set up. He’s stunned by what he perceives to be the inefficiency of the reporting system. “I should be able to call a local number and get someone on the line who knows the area,” he says. “Can you believe she wanted to know the nearest restaurant? This is supposed to be a specific ‘oil spill’ response number. Maybe they need to buy some maps!”

We coax the scared bird into the boat’s empty cooler for the ride, propping it’s clear top open to give it fresh air.

08:55 a.m.: Just as we pull near shore north of the town of Grand Isle P.J. is able to reach his friend who works with LDFW, who gives him a local number to call.

Within five minutes from around the tip of the island we make out an official boat speeding towards us, the spray off its bow backlit by the climbing sun.

09:10 a.m.: The boat, captained by Fred Wirstrom, carries a pair of LDFW employees and a half-dozen empty cat boxes. Apparently the call to the toll-free number had eventually been forwarded to them; they knew we were out here somewhere with an injured bird but our GPS coordinates had proven evasive.

As he slides into a zippered white hazmat suit and blue latex gloves LDFW ranger Tim Kimmel lectures P.J., even though he’s identified himself as a representative of the local government. “Next time it would be best if you left the bird where you found it and called us in to do the rescue,” he explains, slipping on blue latex gloves (P.J.’d handled the bird bare-handed.)

“Yes sir, I understand,” says P.J., his southern politeness overcoming a burning desire to be less so. “But if we hadn’t picked that bird up when we did, if it had cleared the boom and headed into the marsh, it would have never survived.”

“I understand,” says Kimmel, as the two men pass the still-panicked bird from boat to boat. “But we really can’t have just anyone picking up injured animals. It’s not good for the animals.”

“Yes sir, next time, yes sir, I understand,” says P.J.

Once the bird is stuffed into the cat box and the official boat is zipping away towards Grand Isle, P.J. is still muttering. “Can you believe she wanted to know the name of the nearest restaurant?”

(For a video account of P.J.’s morning, go to nola.com)

The animals that helped win World War Two

by Sean McLachlan on


Animals have always been used in war, but historians tend to dismiss them as living equipment and say little about their experiences. A new exhibition at The National World War II Museum in New Orleans seeks to right that imbalance by focusing on the war effort of animals on both sides of the conflict.

Loyal Forces: Animals in WWII features life-sized mannequins of horses and mules with original harnesses and equipment to show how they did their work at the front carrying supplies and hauling artillery to places where tanks and trucks couldn’t go. There are exhibits on carrier pigeons and dogs too.

Animals had a high death rate. They were often worked to death or killed in the crossfire, and at times were even eaten by hungry soldiers. On the other hand, some were treated as pets by men desperate for some reminder of home while trying to survive in the midst of hell.

Many became heroes, like Lady Astor, a pigeon that carried a vital message from North Africa despite being wounded in action, or Smoky, a dog that ran telegraph wire for American GIs during the Pacific campaign.

The exhibition is a fitting reminder of the sacrifices animals have made for human folly, but London does one better. At Brook Gate next to Hyde Park there’s a memorial to the animals who served. The inscription reads, “This monument is dedicated to all the animals that served and died alongside British and allied forces in wars and campaigns throughout time. They had no choice.”

Loyal Forces: Animals in WWII starts this Thursday and runs until October 17.

Photo courtesy user Otasiro via Wikimedia Commons.

From the shores of Louisiana: a peek inside of the oil industry

by Jon Bowermaster on


Morgan City, Louisiana – Driving old Highway 90 paralleling the Gulf Coast under a vast, super-heated blue sky filled with cumulus it’s almost possible to forget the horror that continues to seethe beneath the nearby sea.

But the manmade scenery that lines the road – warehouse buildings, one after another, parking lots filled with pick-up trucks and SUVs — brings me right back to the connective tissue that links all of Louisiana: Oil.

Let’s be clear: There is really only one industry in Louisiana. Yes, fishing generates a couple billion dollars a year. And tourism, most of it focused around New Orleans and conventions, brings in more than $6 billion a year.

But all of that pales when stacked next to the $70 billion a year the oil business generates in the state and the 320,000 jobs it creates. A rigger with a high school education can, with overtime, make $100,000 a year. When workers come home from the rigs reeking of oil, they chide their buddies at the bar: “Smell that money!”

Morgan City is the headquarters of Louisiana’s oil industry; it was just offshore in 1947 that the nation’s first oil well was drilled. In the boom years that followed dozens of Cajun welders, tinkerers and mini-inventors got rich off patents devised for those very first reusable, movable drill rigs. One lasting result is the booming service and supply industry that dominates the frontage roads lining the highway.

These companies build, repair and deliver everything the industry needs, from 20-ton heat activators to sandwiches for the rigs, which have morphed into floating villages. There are household names like Halliburton and GE alongside international service companies like Baker Hughes, Delmar and Valeros and dozens of smaller outfits like Dolphin Energy Equipment, Oil Mop LLC and Diamond Offshore.

Scattered among the sprawling warehouses are churches and bars, discount cigarette stores, strip joints, mobile home sales, Po-boy restaurants, more churches and more strip clubs.

It used to be the industry was responsible for 40 percent of the state’s revenues; today it’s between 10 and 15 percent . The state’s governors, from Huey Long through Bobby Jindal, don’t even bother to pay lip service to being independent from the industry. They are joined at the hip, their elections funded by contributions from it, the state’s rules and regulations written and approved by it.

This is not just a Louisiana story though, it is an all-American one. The state provides 30 percent of the nation’s oil supply, to which the rest of us remain very, very thirsty – and addicted — consumers. So what goes on in Louisiana impacts us all.

Near Amelia, just west of Morgan City, we pull off the road to have a look at the monstrous J. Ray McDermott property which stretches for miles towards the Gulf. The company – which built the first all-concrete platform in the Gulf in 1950 and was the first to drill to 100 feet below in 1954 – today provides ships, derricks and barges for the oil industry around the world, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Asian Pacific, the Middle East to the Caspian Sea.

It is a blinking LED billboard that attracts me: The company is looking for employees for deepwater jobs — ROV drivers, shipmates, riggers and more —
a reminder that while the gusher continues, so does the oil industry.

From the Shores of Louisiana: Jon takes to the road

by Jon Bowermaster on

From the Shores of Louisiana: Jon Bowermaster from gadling on Vimeo.

Lafayette, Louisiana — It’s a steamy, early-summer day in Southern Louisiana – expecting the “heat index” to top out today around 108 degrees F! – but it’s good to be back on the ground here. I’ve been coming every few months for the past two years, producing a documentary film, and it’s started to feel like a second-home. One with really good food … and music.

Yesterday, evidence of the impact of the oil spill came home when I went in search of an oyster po-boy. At the first couple stops, café owners apologized for not having any … a first in their lifetimes … because the oyster beds have been shut now for more than five weeks. When I finally did find one, something didn’t feel quite right, so I asked: The oysters came from … somewhere else, outside Louisiana, was all the server could offer with a shrug.

While the spill is conversation number one (with World Cup football second), I can feel a kind of creeping frustration/resignation settling in.

In Lafayette, which has more oil-industry jobs per capita than anywhere other than Midland, Texas, there’s a fair amount of rumbling in the bars and on the street corners about the deepwater drilling moratorium, with a majority believing the New Orleans’ federal judge’s decision to start up again is a good one.

There’s lots of concern about where all that oil waste is heading. A few people have brought up concerns about the health of the workers involved in the clean-up; apparently BP is against the workers wearing respirators on the job because 1) it looks bad on camera and 2) they’re afraid people with their faces covered are going to overheat and collapse.

There’s concern too that while BP appears to be saying all the right things right now in regard to its long-term commitment and willingness to pay all “legitimate” claims that six months from now, a year from now … locals will be locked in fights with the mega-company for their money.

From the Shores of Louisiana: A letter from a Louisiana fisherman

by Jon Bowermaster on

Among the many I’ve met and worked with in southern Louisiana (SoLa) these past two years, making a film about the relationship between man and the sea, no couple has impressed me more than Tracy Kuhns and Michael Roberts. Committed to family, community, and the environmental concerns of them all, they share many hats: Both work as the Louisiana Bayoukeepers. Mike is a fulltime fisherman and when he’s not fishing, a builder. Tracy runs the local Fisherman’s Association They have kids and grandkids and neighbors along the watery canals where they all keep their fishing boats tied. I shared their story with you a couple Dispatches back, from Barataria

Tracy is usually the front person; she was the one who got the Mayor of Lafitte on the phone the other day when I was visiting, haranguing him to decide if the fishery was open or not. Mike often stands in the background, especially when it comes to journalists. But he was the one who compared BP execs to terrorists, for the damage the local economy and fishing grounds that now appears will last for many, many years. Last Sunday, Mike and Tracy went out from their home on the waters leading to Barataria Bay and the Gulf to see just how bad it is. Below is an email Mike sent me after we’d visited:

The boat ride, out from Lafitte, Louisiana on Sunday to our fishing grounds was like any other I have taken in my life as a commercial fisherman from this area. I have made this same trip thousands of times in my 35 plus years of shrimping and crabbing.

A warm breeze in my face, it is a typical Louisiana summer day. Three people were with me — my wife Tracy, Ian Wren, and our grandson, Scottie. I was soon to find out just how untypical this day would become for me, not unlike a death in the family. This was going to be a very bad day for me.

As we neared Barataria Bay, the smell of crude oil in the air got thicker and thicker. The approach of the fishing grounds, an event that has always brought joy to me all of my life, was slowly turning into a nightmare. As we entered Grand Lake, the name we fishermen call Barataria Bay, I started to see a weird, glassy look to the water and soon it became evident there was oil sheen as far as I could see. Soon, we were running past patches of red oil floating on top of the water. As we headed farther south we saw at least a dozen boats, which from a distance appeared to be shrimping. But we soon realized that shrimping was not what they were doing at all; instead they were towing oil booms in a desperate attempt to corral oil that was pouring into our fishing grounds. We stopped to talk to one of the fishermen towing a boom, a young fisherman from Lafitte. What he told me floored me. “What we are seeing in the lake, the oil, was but a drop in the bucket of what was to come,” he said. He had just come out of the Gulf of Mexico and said, “It was unbelievable, and the oil runs for miles and miles and was headed for shore and into our fishing grounds. I thought what I had already seen in the lake was bad enough for a lifetime. We talked a little while longer, gave the fisherman some protective respirators, and were soon on our way. As we left the small fleet of boats working feverishly, trying to corral the oil, I became overwhelmed with what I had seen.

I am not real emotional and consider myself a pretty tough guy. You have to be to survive as a fisherman. But as I left that scene, tears flowed down my face and I cried. Something I have not done in a long time, but would do several more times this day. I tried not to let my grandson, Scottie, see me crying. I didn’t think he would understand, that I was crying for his stolen future. None of this will be the same, for decades to come. The damage is going to be immense and I do not think our lives here in South Louisiana will ever be the same. He is too young to understand. He has an intense love for our way of life here. He wants to be a fisherman and a fishing guide when he gets older. That’s all he’s ever wanted. It is what he is, it is in his soul, and it is his culture. How can I tell him that this may never come to pass now, now that everything he loves in the outdoors may soon be destroyed by this massive oil spill? How do we tell this to a generation of young people in south Louisiana who live and breathe this bayou life that they love so much, could soon be gone? How do we tell them? All this raced through my mind and I wept.

We continued farther south towards Grand Terre Island. We approached Bird Island. Its real name is Queen Bess Island, but we call it Bird Island, because it is always full of birds. It is a rookery, a nesting island for thousands of birds, pelicans, terns, gulls and more. As we got closer we saw that protective booms had been placed around about two thirds of the island. But it was obvious to me that oil had gone under the boom and was fouling the shore and had undoubtedly oiled some birds. My God. We would see this scene again at Cat Island and other unnamed islands. We continued on to the east past Coup Abel Pass and saw more shrimp boats trying to contain some of the oil on the surface. We arrived at 4 Bayou Pass to see more boats working on the same thing. We beached the boat and decided to look at the beach between the passes.

The scene was one of horror to me. There was thick red oil on the entire stretch of beach, with oil continuing to wash ashore. The water looked to be infused with red oil, with billions of what appeared to be red pebbles of oil washing up on the beach with every wave. The red oil pebbles, at the high tide mark on the beach, were melting into pools of red goo under the hot Louisiana sun. The damage was overwhelming. There was nobody there to clean it up. It would take an army to do it. Like so much of coastal Louisiana, it was accessible only by boat. Will it ever be cleaned up? I don’t know. Tears again. We soon left that beach and started to head home.

We took a little different route home, staying a little farther to the east side of Barataria Bay. As we approached the northern end of the bay, we ran into another raft of oil that appeared to be covering many square miles. It was only a mile from the interior bayous on the north side of Barataria Bay. My God. No boats were towing boom in this area. I do not think anyone even knew it was there. A little bit farther north we saw some shrimp boats with boom, on anchor, waiting to try and protect Bayou St. Dennis from the oil. I alerted them that oil was on its way. I hope they were able to control it before it reached the bayou. We left them and started towards home.

My heart never felt so heavy as on that ride in. I thought to myself, This is the most I’ve cried since I was a baby. In fact I am sure it was. This will be a summer of tears for a lot of us in south Louisiana.

JB: I spoke with Tracy after their exploration. She was no less moved:

“We are heartbroken. The oil has moved into Barataria Bay and is heading north. The southern half of our fishing grounds is closed. Seeing grown, tough men cry and knowing our grandchildren, like Scottie, who’s life and career dreams are related to bayou life, is something to hard to watch or think about. The government, whose sole purpose is to protect the health and safety of its citizens has and is continuing to fail the people. They are allowing BP to kill the Gulf of Mexico and its coastal communities. Shame on them, how can they sleep at night?”