Today I visited the Fort Morgan, Alabama, beach and other beaches along the route to Fort Pickens in Gulf Breeze Florida. The overall ‘appearance’ is pretty good considering what it looked like six weeks ago. Fort Morgan had many pelicans, gulls, terns and willets foraging along the shore. There were many bait fish in the surf zone which provided a feast for the birds and bigger fish as well as one dolphin I noticed.
There is a shelf of oil about half an inch thick that is buried under sand at the point of Ft Morgan. Also, there are millions of tiny tar balls scattered on the beach there.
As I was photographing at the point, a contractor for BP drove up on a four-wheeler and started talking. He said he just goes down to the point to read his paper. He jokingly asked me not to take his photograph because he’d get in trouble. The guy was really nice but my complaint all along with the crew at Ft Morgan has been the work ethic, or lack thereof. Mr. Safety Officer, BP is paying you to work, not sit and read your paper.
Next, I visited Romar Beach in Orange Beach, Alabama. It had been very heavily oiled earlier in the summer. Today, the sand was groomed and mostly white with only a small amount of discoloration. There was a very slight crude oil smell near the water, but very faint. Oil sank off shore here as it did in the wildlife refuge so there was a small amount of oily froth, but very slight.
There are still workers cleaning the beaches at Johnson Beach. But this wasn’t them. These guys were at Ft Pickens cleaning the beaches there. Both areas are in the Gulf Islands National Seashore. The Johnson Beach crew was working at a very relaxed pace. (That’s a nice way to describe their work ethic). Both areas are using the sifting machines, just like Romar Beach and Gulf State Park beaches.
Finally, I visited Gulf State Park’s Alabama Point, near the Florida-Alabama line. The beaches here had small tar balls under groomed sand. It was a lovely afternoon on the shore there with salty air blowing briskly off the Gulf. It was a good place to end my whirlwind two day check of the places I have documented and will continue to document for the next year.
While there has been much progress made in cleaning the beaches along the Alabama and Florida coasts, there are still sunken patches of oil that continue to release toxins. I don’t want us to stick our heads in the sand and think that because the beaches appear clean, everything is fine.
Here are my main concerns: 1) There have been a lot of blue crabs along the Alabama coast that were killed. Six weeks ago they were lethargic in the surf zone. Now their carcasses are washed up on the beaches. The bottom feeders were and are being very badly affected. 2) There are no active coquina shells, that I could see. These are tiny bivalves that burrow into the sand and form a vital link in the food chain. This concerns me greatly. 3) The beaches that are ‘groomed’ are ones that are visited by people. The worst beaches, by far, of the seven I visited the past two days were part of the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge. At both locations in the refuge (Mobile Street and Ft Morgan) there were millions of tiny tar balls in the sand. Ft Morgan has a visible shelf of oil-sand mix and the Mobile St entrance area (near the hiking trail junction with the beach) has oily mousse continuing to wash in. I am concerned that wildlife habitat is being neglected in order to appease merchants desire to have tourists see white, groomed sand in the more populated beaches. Areas that we set aside for wildlife are just as important as areas humans visit. 4) People are fishing, crabbing, and shrimping here. The black oil I saw in the crabs washed up tends to point to a safety question. Do you want to risk being the top end of the food chain that gets the build-up of ALL the dispersant and crude oil toxins? It makes no sense to allow harvesting of seafood at this point. No common sense anyway. 5) There are still animals dying and I wonder why their carcasses are not collected and analyzed. BP is supposed to pay per bird, per turtle, per dolphin….but these deaths appear to being ignored. So the death counts will be incorrect.
Finally, I applaud the majority of contract workers who have worked hard to clean the beaches. Many of them have worked with dedication. All of them are risking their health and quite possibly their lives. You guys and gals have worked the front lines of this disaster and you have definitely made a difference. THANK YOU!
There is still work to do and we must depend on independent scientists who will take the samples, collect data and tell the truth about what is happening to the ecosystem along the beautiful Gulf Coast. We are depending on you, but more important, the wildlife–the innocents–are depending on you.
Yesterday was the six month anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Disaster. It was also the date of my first presentation on my new book, which devotes the last section of images and writing to the event. As I shared about my work at the Gulf during the heaviest part of the spill and my continued commitment to documenting the unfolding story there, interest from the group was keen. One of my deepest fears is that people will forget and return to status quo, foregoing the lessons the spill can teach us. This group wanted to learn more and their interest went beyond the allotted time for the event. People have a desire to be informed. This fact gave me hope.
Even though I’m visiting the coast monthly, I have not openly discussed my experience lately. Reading from my book and sharing images from July and August made the sense of trauma, of rawness return. Later in the day I found myself anxious, on edge, and reliving the trauma I felt while standing on the beaches watching ankle-deep oily sludge coat the pure white sand, killing everything it touched.
I return soon for another week on the Gulf Coast. My plan is to visit the seven sensitive land areas and immerse myself in observation of birds, animals, and daily functions of the ecosystems there. Sitting with a sick friend helps you learn more about their condition, right? So that’s my intention for this visit. I’m taking crystals people have sent as a gift of healing for the earth and with them, their prayers for restoration and health of the land, water, air, wildlife, plant life, and people. 
