Oil in the Gulf, Part II and Final

…..any oil in Ft. Walton Beach in early August, either. Nothing but amazing powdery beaches that were great for sand-castle building! We even had Tropical Depression Five that made for some good surfing waves! I managed to send in a few shots to my hometown weather blog…

……There’s no doubt that the spill was a serious blow to the already-troubled Louisiana barrier islands. However… I think everyone was expecting another “Exxon-Valdez” disaster out of this one, but the physics were totally different. The Gulf of Mexico is an absolutely incredible cauldron of life with near-perfect temps. Microscopic life in the Gulf had an absolute bonanza on the influx of oil, and feasted on it. Up in Alaska, you’ve got permanently refrigerated sea-water, thus the oil hangs around. In the gulf, that stuff is GONE. Thanks to decades of oil-based pollutants washing down the Mississippi and other big rivers, there was plenty of oil-eating bacteria at the ready.

will take a long time to understand and a longer time to fix…..just because you had a good time on the beach doesn’t mean all is peachy. When I was in destin in late June and early july the tar balls and the oil hit while we were there…….sad and disgusting to see….. the effects that we as tourist or even residents of the area are a small part of the total impact and the worst thing that we could do as a people would be to down play the impact because we had clean beaches for our summer vacation. The ecosystem will have the tell tale signs of this disaster for decades to come even if it does take a mass spectrometer or a biopsy to reveal it and our vacation is otherwise unsullied.

 I was one of those that commented on your first post. I was like most Americans very concerned about the spill and the impact it could have on the local citizenary. As an avid sea food lover and salt water fisherman, I dearly love the Gulf coast. I still plan to continue to both fish and eat from the Gulf. I pray that it will recover and that we have no repeat incidents.
I spent 20 days on the water this past summer off P C and Destin. And I attended a family reunion in P C. While I was (and still am) concerned about the spill. However, I have friends and family that live on the Miss. & La. coast who were at first very concerned and then relieved by that their worst fears not actually occurring. They all depend on tourism for their local economies and hey were hit hard by the scare and panic spread by the media. It will take a while for many to recover from the media panic.
Finally, we should remember the loss of life that happened on the platform explosion. Their families will never be the same. As much as I love college football, events like this really put things in perspective for us.

We all prayed not only for the residents, but for the love of wildlife also. I am interested in how BP is thought to have handled the disaster from the perspective of local residents. I plan on spending some time with the local shrimpers in Mississippi when I make my next trip down.
Thanks for the update.

WAR EAGLE!