Gulf Oil Spill Archives - Page 5 of 19 -

Technology=Intelligence?

By Simone Lipscomb | May 17, 2013

Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. We might be most familiar with this organization through the movie Contact starring Jody Foster. Looking for intelligent life on other planets, in other galaxies is SETI’s mission.

I heard an NPR interview with Jill Tarter on the program Science Friday/Talk of the Nation. She is the chair of SETI. In the interview she made a statement that made me guffaw. “Technology is our proxy for intelligence. Technological civilizations survive for a very long time. It may take 100,000 years for a signal to reach Earth but if they were there to send the signal, they’re probably still there.”

Since I was driving I had to carefully control my reaction but I did laugh, hysterically perhaps. While I understand the basis of her statement I question the logic of it.

Oiled beach from 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

In the short time humans have been on this planet we have managed to destroy life forms, land masses, pollute waterways, over-populate and exploit resources to the point where future life is questionable. Was she suggesting that other life forms might be more intelligent and survived with their technology without destroying their planet? If that’s the case, I want to meet them…as long as they are friendly and helpful. Mean aliens need to stay away.

Maybe her ET’s could teach us how to care for our planet and use our technologies wisely instead of the highly destructive ways we use them now….drilling for oil miles below the surface of the ocean, injecting toxic chemicals into the Earth to eek out natural gas and pollute the water-table, strip mining, mountain-top removal mining….and on and on.

Does technology equal intelligence? I haven’t seen evidence of that on this planet.

(Please note: I did not take the photos of the ET’s).

Shady Deals on Alabama Coast

By Simone Lipscomb | May 9, 2013

*Gulf State Park shoreline is one of the last undeveloped places between Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.*

It shouldn’t surprise me. I used to work for the State of Alabama in Gulf State Park and witnessed first-hand the rape of our coast at the whim of politicians. So when I found out that much of the $85.5 million from the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) funds from BP are going to build a lodge and meeting facility I didn’t faint…isn’t this how Alabama politicians work it?

*Walls of concrete and glass broken by undeveloped shoreline in Gulf State Park.*

Never mind that the convention center has been in the plans for years since the old one was destroyed by…what was it…Ivan? Long before the oil spill occurred and people started figuring out how to use natural resource restoration funding to build more developments on the coasts…and thus destroy the very thing the funds are supposed to restore.

Louisiana, the most hard-hit state from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is using $340 million to restore four barrier islands and create two fisheries laboratories. That makes total sense. Imagine….using money designated to restore the natural resources to actually RESTORE NATURAL RESOURCES! What a concept! Bravo Louisiana.

Hard to believe that money designated for natural resource restoration is going to be used for CONSTRUCTION of a convention center on the beach. This photograph was taken at Gulf State Park Pier during the spill in 2010

But back to Governor Bentley of Alabama. He said that the first money Alabama will spend for the convention center will address the loss of human use from the oil spill. That’s some mighty smooth pretzel logic there governor.

“In addition to its catastrophic impact on local fishermen and tourism, the BP oil spill dealt a severe blow to our pristine beaches and sensitive environmental areas,” said U.S. Representative Jo Bonner, R-Alabama. So the way to restore our Alabama pristine beaches and sensitive environmental areas is to destroy them through the construction process. Of course. That’s makes sense…said no one ever.

The second project in Alabama will use $2.3 million in Mobile County to restore oyster beds over 300 acres. The third project will spend $5 million in Baldwin County to create an oyster breakwater and living shoreline in Weeks Bay. Both of these projects make total sense in that they utilize funds designated for N A T U R A L R E S O U R C E R E S T O R A T I O N. The old saying, throw the dog a bone, seems applicable perhaps. Of the $92.8 million Alabama is receiving, 92% goes to construction projects in Gulf State Park. Development. Oysters in Mobile County get 2% and oysters in Weeks Bay get 5%. So 7% of this ‘natural resource restoration’ funding goes to doing what its supposed to do.

But back to project number one. Thrown into the mix of the $85.5 million is an environmental research and educational facility (sort of like the one Auburn University was already planning on building here???), trail construction and an interpretive center. I didn’t hear of trails in the park being damaged by the oil spill…did you? Nor did the old convention center get destroyed by the oil spill.

I completely support environmental education but the funds are supposed to restore the natural resources that were damaged during the oil spill. Can the governor and his cronies read? Can someone find them a dictionary? My BS radar is beeping when words like environmental and education are grouped with a huge convention center construction project.

While tourism is at the highest numbers ever in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach over the past two years, politics remains the same in this state…my home state…where shady deals continue to thrive. Storm clouds loom over this news and Governor Bentley only adds to the abuse of our coastline…unless you put money and development over natural resources. Then bravo gubner.

A First-Grader Teaches Me

By Simone Lipscomb | April 21, 2013

I left my home early this morning on my way to Fort Morgan Ferry via a stop-over at a beach between here and there to check for Least Tern courtship and nesting behavior for NFWS. My ultimate destination was the Dauphin Island Sea Lab Discovery Day. I was volunteering at the Marine Mammal Stranding Network table and display.

I did indeed see the endangered species of Least Terns frolicking over the Gulf and having seen at least 30 of those beautiful birds, I drove on to Ft. Morgan.

Waiting in line as a pedestrian at the ferry dock I met a couple from Quebec cycling to Austin, Texas and then on to Europe. I suddenly had an urge to do something crazy like they were doing. They had sold everything and were living and traveling via recumbent cycles pulling small trailers. Reminded me of the guy who sold everything to follow his dream of creating life-size prints of whales. These folks are doing something BIG! And I like it!!!

Meanwhile, I rode the ferry as a pedestrian and made the short walk to the Sea Lab. It was awesome seeing so many families out enjoying the day and learning more about our coastal treasures.

After helping store our display, I walked through the Estuarium and sat for a while with a nurse shark and hopefully somehow communicated my appreciation to him and his cousins all over the globe. That quiet moment sitting nose-to-nose with this beautiful little shark was precious. Then it got crowded so I moved on and walked back to the ferry dock and waited over an hour for the next ferry.

During this time I met an amazing young man who is a first grader. He and his grandmothers had walked on the ferry and visited the Sea Lab’s Discovery Day. We chatted and then, when the ferry arrived, boarded together. The young man and I visited more as we made the trip across Mobile Bay. He expressed his dislike of drilling for gas and oil in the bay and Gulf. He told me of his love for ‘mother nature.’

Just when I felt as if humans had reached the bottom of environmental and social concern, I met this amazing young man who is a volunteer for Share the Beach…Alabama’s sea turtle volunteer program. He without hesitation expresses his love for mother nature and is clear about his distaste and concern over drilling for oil and gas in the water.

On this three year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster–when I stopped counting gas rigs in the bay at over 30 in the crossing from Ft. Morgan to Dauphin Island–and when my hope for humanity had reached a new low, this boy reminded me of the generations that are rising up to lead us. Suddenly I didn’t feel hopeless any more.

April Fool?

By Simone Lipscomb | April 2, 2013

I was beginning to think it was a bad April Fool’s joke. I was standing on the beach asking the lifeguard if he knew where the dead dolphin was that had been reported. He didn’t but rode west three miles down the beach on his three wheeler looking….nothing. I called our stranding coordinator and told her the lifeguard reported that someone said there had been a dolphin with rope on its tail…but no dead dolphin materialized. Not sounding good….could we be getting pranked by spring breakers?

A little nudge from my intuition sent me walking east. It was looking pretty hopeless but my intuition nudged me again…ask the fisherman. I did and he said…”Yes, I know exactly where it is. Can’t you smell it?”

simonelipscomb (5) — *Recovered dolphin last week*

Great. And I thought last week’s dolphin carcass was challenging. The bloating was significant and so was the smell. But I was observing a necropsy of a very large, adult male dolphin inside a facility. Some decomposing and a lot of blood…the smell of blood was what wore on my stamina. Tissue samples were taken, counting of teeth, and all the other data that must be collected from a marine mammal death. Hours upon hours of locating, loading, hauling, photographing, and bit-by-bit taking the dolphin apart and taking samples from organs, blood, eyes…a very intensive effort on the part of several people.

Thankfully it wasn't another dead dolphin — *Thankfully it wasn’t an uncounted dead dolphin*

But today, I witnessed another large dolphin…this time in the final stages of decay. The body had been dragged with a rope and there were parts missing….the lower right mandible, the dorsal fin…and even in the ragged state this dolphin was in, I could see where tissue had been removed. Between our coordinator, my on-scene eyes (and nose…significant putrid smell) and another biologist via telephone, we pieced together the story.

This dolphin was found in December, processed by the other biologist and dragged up in the dunes by the resort gardener and buried. It had been recently unearthed by someone or something and the smell created a curiosity in spring break celebrants who reported to the resort management there was a dolphin on the beach with a rope around it. They forgot to mention the fact that it was nearly skeletal….but that’s okay. We want to be sure it is a dolphin that has already been counted….and not an unreported death.

I had nothing to measure the length of the carcass except my flip flops.... x 9 lengths — *I had nothing to measure the length of the carcass except my flip flops…. x 9 lengths*

Perhaps I did feel like an April Fool….but in a good way I suppose. Not another dolphin death, just a resurrection…of sorts….VERY ‘of sorts.’

Every marine mammal that washes onshore (bays and rivers included…not just the Gulf) and is reported has to be confirmed, measured, tissue samples taken and a lot of paperwork completed by the coordinator at Dauphin Island Sea Lab. She is working to build the volunteer program so our state can do its part in reporting dolphin and manatee mortality and stranding.

It’s not a pleasant job as most ‘strandings’ are really recovery and examination of dead dolphins and manatees. But it is very necessary to gather the data and samples so the reason behind the nearly 900 dolphin deaths since the BP Oil Spill can be determined. Everyone isn’t capable of this kind of ‘death’ work…but there are different jobs you can do to help the Alabama Marine Mammal Stranding Network. It’s one way you can make a difference.

Fat Tuesday

By Simone Lipscomb | February 14, 2013

I was standing at Lulu’s Homeport in Gulf Shores, Alabama, listening to a band play a traditional Mardi Gras tune and felt a subtle, inner shift. A small glimmer of something started to awaken within me and it made me smile.

When embarking on a course of action it’s not necessarily easy because you (finally) found your path–your direction. When I answered an inner call to document the Gulf Oil Spill in my home state, I never imagined the emotional wreckage that would occur within me. I remember days before the oil began washing up on the Alabama beaches fervently trying to photograph as much of the Gulf beaches and marshes as possibly and while doing so sobbing, sometimes uncontrollably. Then when it began coming ashore and coating animals, beaches and filling the air with toxic fumes I was in a state of near exhaustion from anger, sadness, grief and the physical challenge of exposure to the toxic soup in the water and air.

It changed me. I remember going back to my mountain home for a few weeks each month and finding it very difficult to connect with anything pleasurable. I was numb from what I was seeing. Traumatized. And in some sort of cosmic disbelief that humans could destroy our planet…not just by an oil spill…but by endless sins committed against this beautiful planet and its inhabitants. Nothing touched me. Beauty was painful to see. Yet I couldn’t look away from the environmental destruction because finally I felt I was doing my legacy work.

Sometimes the cost of that commitment is high.

There was healing during the many weeks spent along the coast. Realizations, moments of inspiration but it was a week spent with Joanna Macy, in a Work That Reconnects workshop that truly helped me understand and process what I had been going through. And healing continues since my move back to the Gulf Coast.

Yes, I enjoy SUP boarding and walking the beaches and diving in the Caribbean. I’m not walking around in a constant state of gloom and doom. Yet finding a space for personal pleasure….just the inkling of fun for no particular reason…has continued to be challenging for me. The burden of our planet’s plight is heavy.

But yesterday, while riding my sea turtle volunteer team’s float in the Gulf Shores Mardi Gras parade and hanging out at Lulu’s with my friend and her family provided a little spark of fun for the sake of fun….with the intention of fun. Imagine that.

Gratitude for a day of fun runs deep within me. It helps to balance the deep grief that fuels my work to share the beauty of our planet…in the hope that people will realize the beauty of Earth and will do everything they can to help heal it. And heal the human relationship to it…and each other.