Bowermaster’s Adventures – Measuring the extent of oil spillage

by Jon Bowermaster on

With the six-month anniversary of the BP spill now in the rear view mirror the company as well as a variety of officials both federal and state would like the world to believe the oil is gone.

But photos and first-hand accounts from Barataria Bay recently show the opposite – oil still reaching high into the marshy grasslands, baby crabs and adult shrimp covered by crude, slicks on the surface.

If you didn’t know it was November the scene is reminiscent of July, the height of the spill, with haz-mat suited workers rushing around in small boats, booms and vacuums still being deployed in attempts to clean up what is clearly still a mess. According to P.J. Hahn, Plaquemine Parish’s coastal zone director, more than 32,000 gallons of oil were sucked out of nearby marshes in just the past 10 days. “People think it’s over, but look around,” says Hahn.

This oil plaguing Barataria Bay is not newly arrived, but has rolled in since the well was officially capped on September 19th. While the Louisiana coastline considered “heavily oiled” (more than half an inch) has decreased from 54 miles in early July to 28 miles today, the total amount of Louisiana shoreline impacted by oil has grown from 287 in July to 320 miles today.

“In some ways it’s worse today,” Hahn said, “because the world mistakenly thinks all the oil has somehow miraculously disappeared.

“That’s simply not the case.”

%Gallery-107702%

Bowermaster’s Adventures: Using creatures to filter the sea

by Jon Bowermaster on

While scientists continue to monitor fish taken from the Gulf for raised levels of chemicals and oil, others around the globe are using specific species to purposely suck up polluted waters.

Two recent reports cite scallops and oysters being used like the proverbial “canary in a coal mine” to both warn of the impacts of growing toxins in the ocean and to help clean it up.

In Russia, the Moscow Times reports, organic chemists have set up a giant sea scallop garden in Kozmino Bay on the Sea of Japan – 7 times zones east of Moscow – near a new, very busy Siberian oil terminal to measure water pollution. Big, recent oil discoveries in remote Siberia are being delivered to the port by pipeline and business at the terminal is expected to double this year to 200 million barrels. Nearby in the same bay abandoned Soviet-era ships, pipelines and old Navy infrastructure rot in the sea.

Known for their ability to filter contaminants including oil and heavy metals, the scallops will serve as watchdogs for the booming port.

Curiously the scallops – 10,000 of the meaty suckers, squeezed into 80 long tubular nets — are not being used so much to help scientists conduct long-term monitoring thus preventing oil spills but rather to help clean them up, suggesting that spills are inevitable not stoppable.
“If the monitoring is successful, we have an idea to create large permanent colonies for scallops, mussels and seaweed at the bottom of the bay and use them to filter the water and keep it clean,” a spokesman told the Times.Across the Northern Pacific, the Voice of America reports on a Seattle laboratory where scientists are using baby oysters for their filtering systems. The goal is to assess just how efficient the oysters are at sucking up carbon dioxide, which is being dumped into the sea thanks to the burning of fossil fuels (the severe problem known as the “evil twin” of global warming, ocean acidification).

Paul McElhany, a biologist working at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, has set up a four tanks reflecting the amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean in 1) pre-industrial times, 2) today, 3) the projected amount for the year 2100 and 4) a worse-case scenario. The tanks are filled with Pacific Northwest oysters, which are monitored each day by grad students.

Why oysters? Because they are apparently the most sensitive of all filter fish.

Not all fish are impacted similarly by the ocean’s increased acidity; apparently algae and seaweed prosper under elevated levels of carbon dioxide while shellfish can literally begin to dissolve.

Next up to be tested after oysters? Abalone, geoducks, clams, mussels and krill.

I’m not sure if I’d rather be a scallop assigned to suck up spilled oil or an oyster asked to put its life on the line to help better understand ocean acidification, but both sound better than what scientists are doing to poor zebrafish at Duke University, which are being used to analyze genetic mutations.

In efforts to better understand the inherited Bardet-Biedl syndrome — its symptoms are obesity, retardation and retinopathy – and Down’s syndrome, in vivo tests are being done on zebrafish to see how they respond to defective mammalian cells.

Word of caution: I’d be careful about ordering the Siberian sea scallops for the indefinite future.

[flickr photo via Dan Hershman]

Bowermaster’s Adventures: Lifiting the drilling moratorium

by Jon Bowermaster on

Less than 180 days after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank and less than 60 days after BP finally sealed the well that leaked 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama Administration lifted its own moratorium on deepwater drilling.

While Gulf State oil workers, especially in Louisiana, are relieved, hoping that new permits will be approved by year’s end and jobs that have been on hold can continue, others are concerned the early end of the moratorium (days before it was planned, on November 30) may be rushed.

Five reasons we may regret the early lifting:

  • New rules and regulations required by oil industry operators may not be sufficiently understood, by either government or industry. New standards require that operators must have blowout preventers inspected and design approved by an independent third party. In direct response to the BP accident, new deepwater rigs must come with reports illustrating exactly how they could prevent or reduce a blowout at the wellhead. And they must have all casing designs and cementing operations certified by an outside engineer. All of that sounds good on paper, but is the new government agency set up to inspect new permits ready?
  • Environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council – comprised of scientists and lawyers – worry that not enough is known about what exactly caused the BP explosion to prevent a similar accident from happening again. Despite the new standards for permitting “there is no insurance that future drilling will be done responsibly,” says the NRDC’s executive director Peter Lehner. Cutting corners will remain a concern in the very-for-profit oil industry.

%Gallery-107702%

  • Lifting the moratorium in the Gulf gives fuel to those hoping for a similar relief off the coast of Alaska. Since the BP accident all drilling in the Beaufort Sea has been banned; Alaska Governor Sean Parnell immediately picked up the argument that if it’s okay to drill below 5,000 feet in the Gulf it should be a-ok to drill in shallow waters in his state’s waters. For now the Department of Interior is proceeding cautiously regarding oil drilling off the North Slope due to to concerns that any spill could decimate a still-mostly pristine environment.
  • With the moratorium lifted Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will have plenty of time on his hands; he’s made lifting the ban his fulltime job since early summer. Never friendly to environmental concerns, Jindal may refocus on the misplaced building of offshore berms (a boon to buddies in the construction business?). He is also pushing for even more shallow water permits – since June only 12 have been permitted off Louisiana; pre-spill that many were okayed every month. But competition for ugliest political maneuvering in the state is stiff: Senator Mary Landrieu continues to single-handedly block the appointment of a new White House budget director until she’s satisfied the moratorium is “sufficiently” lifted.
  • The biggest reason to worry about more deepwater drilling is because inevitably leaks and spills will continue to occur. And not necessarily because of industrial malfeasance or corners being cut, just statistically. As long as we continue to drill one, two and three miles below the ocean’s surface – an always risky, messy undertaking whether on land or sea – there will be accidents, small and, one day again, big. The best protection against another BP-like accident? Less dependence on crude.

[Photos by P.J. Hahn]

From the shores of Louisiana – Gulf Fisheries

by Jon Bowermaster on
In Baton Rouge last week I met for the first time a very vocal third-generation shrimper, George Barisich, who has been working the Gulf his entire life, initially for the fun of it – crabbing as a kid – and ever since as a fulltime commercial fisherman, since 1966.
He inherited his 50-foot shrimp, the “FJG,” which his father named after his three sons: Frances, Jefferson and George.
Today he’s president of the United Commercial Fishermen’s Association, which represents 139 shrimpers who are still all every disappointed by both the BP spill and its follow-up.
While the fisheries have largely been opened, and Barisich and his peers are out there every day catching shrimp, the market for them has mostly disappeared.
“There’s no one to buy the shrimp we’re bringing in, because they’re having a hard time selling it. The result is I’m getting 85 cents for a pound a shrimp, which used to bring me at least two dollars,” he says. “I’m not sure how long I can keep that kind of business going.”
The week before he’d had to drive his shrimp all the way into Mississippi before he could find a processor who would buy his shrimp, for $1.40.

“Back home my dealer don’t want it and his processors don’t want it. I’m going to have to go to make some money, but it’s going to be at depressed price, which means somebody’s going to have to give me free fuel or something. It’s complicated and not many fishermen understand what to do now.”

For the moment he vouches for the safety of the shrimp, despite some local scientist’s concerns that the allowable chemicals in the seafood have been altered by federal testers, making them seem safe when maybe they are not.

“We should be concerned about the reputation of Louisiana shrimp and seafood, so yes it needs to be tested. But for right now, I’m going to stay out there, fishing.”

“As for the oysters … I’m scared to death.” Due to all the freshwater from the Mississippi that was released into the mouth of the Gulf, most of the oyster beds are dead and may take three years or longer to revive.
A physically robust 54-year-old, George garnered good attention at the height of the spill, by appearing on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” show wearing one of his own designed t-shirts.

On the front it had a mock-BP logo and the words, “Bringing Oil to Your Shores in All New Ways.” (Watch video)

“We sold 893 of them the first day after the program,” he says, “which was the best money I made all summer.” The day after I met him last week he was headed to a Gulf Coast concert in Houston armed with t-shirts to sell.

(His knack for producing timely t-shirts had previously gotten him in hot water with Homeland Security, when he handed some out free near a FEMA office soon after Hurricane Katrina. Those read “Flooded by Katrina! Forgotten by FEMA! What’s Next, Mr. Bush?”)

Like many Gulf Coast fishermen, Barisich is wrestling with proposed buy-outs from BP.

“Helping with the clean-up was the first time I ever worked for someone else in my life, so I’m more than a little confused,” he admits.

Thousands of business owners, fishermen and others along the Gulf Coast are confronting a similar conundrum. Those who accept a one-time payoff check for their long-term losses from the victims’ compensation fund will have to give up their right to sue BP. So George could accept a piece of BP’s $20 billion claims fund – relatively fast, easy money – or sue the oil giant for a bigger payday, which could require waiting years and risking ending up with nothing.

“One lump settlement – should I take it if it’s decent? Should I wait it out? It’s on the back of everyone’s minds right now,” says George. “It’s another one of the unknowns that’s driving everyone sleepless right now.

“The only silver lining that is going to come out of this is that the government and the country are going to understand the importance of the Gulf.”

[Flickr image via leunix]

From the Shores of Louisiana – Is gulf seafood safe?

by Jon Bowermaster on
Baton Rouge, Louisiana: It’s rare for me to see 67-year-old Wilma Subra – chemist, MacArthur Grant ‘genius,’ grandmother of six – so worked up. But when I asked last week how things were going in the Gulf, where she’s been measuring levels of toxicity in air, water and fish long before the BP gusher began she was adamant that things are still bad out there.
“My biggest concern is that the message is ‘The oil is all gone.’ We are planning on being out in the field monitoring the wetlands, estuaries and beach areas for the impacts of the oil over the next several years,” she says, insisting that only then will we truly know about the impact on marine life, the environment and human health created by the BP mess.
But Subra’s biggest immediate concern is that the seafood coming from the Gulf may not be safe and that the federal agencies, specifically the FDA and NOAA, have cooked the books by adjusting the amount of some of the chemicals allowed in the fish they are testing… as a way to get fishermen back onto the Gulf and to restore confidence in the seafood market.
She forwarded me the criteria NOAA is using for testing, which makes it clear that its first test is smell and second for chemicals. Subra’s main concern is Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons, of which the BP crude had large percentages.
In June, says Subra, while the spill was still unfolding “the FDA, in association with NOAA, raised the acceptable levels of PAH, without providing a rationale for why.”

“Here’s part of its statement in the Protocol for Interpretation and Use of Sensory Testing and Analytical Chemistry Results for re-opening oil-impacted areas closed to seafood harvesting by the FDA, published June 18, 2010: ‘The new numbers were developed specifically for the unprecedented Deepwater Horizon Oil spill event and will not necessarily be applicable after all fisheries closed due to oil contamination are re-opened for safe harvest. Levels of concern and other factors for any subsequent oil spill event would be independently evaluated based on case-specific information.”

In other words, according to Subra and other scientists, the acceptable levels of PAH in the Gulf’s marine life were raised simply to address the impacts of the BP spill. It smacks less of concern for long-term human health, and more about getting the economy going again.

Subra’s complaints go bigger: “There is no testing for dispersants. In addition the calculations of the meal size used to calculate the consumption quantity is based on things like four shrimp per meal.” Who in Louisiana, or elsewhere, eats just four shrimp at a meal? Which begs another issue, which is that by allowing more chemicals to be in the seafood that is being taken from the Gulf it most-powerfully impacts those who eat it most often … which are the residents of the Gulf.

The bottom line, says Subra, is that “the concentrations of PAHs in seafood, based on the FDA acceptable levels, are inadequate to protect the health of seafood consumers.”

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of NOAA, has defended both her agency and the FDA’s approach and that they are doing “comprehensive testing,” which includes a two-part test: A team of sensory experts tastes and smells the seafood and if it” passes muster,” is sent to a lab and tested for 12 types of hazardous compounds. “

Subra is not alone in not buying the agency’s modus operandi.

Dr. William Sawyer, a Florida-based toxicologist hired by a New Orleans law firm to look at test results of water and seafood samples, said seafood safety could not be guaranteed using those tests. “Absolutely not, especially with respect to Louisiana shrimp.”Senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Gina Solomon, concurs, and on September 21 urged federal officials to undertake “more rigorous” testing. She claims “NOAA only used data from 12 samples of shrimp, consisting of 73 individual shrimp for its evaluation. That’s just too small, she said, for an area the size of Connecticut.”Lubchenco, NOAA and the FDA continue to defend the testing and claim “the Gulf seafood taken from these waters is safe to eat” and the reopening of Gulf fishing waters “is another signal to tourists the northern Gulf is open for business.”