May 2, 2010 Oil Spill Info: A Must Read Blog Entry

Image by Chris Denbow via Flickr

From: http://blog.nature.org/2010/05/bill-finch-nature-conservancy-oil-spill-alabama-oyster/

BAYOU LA BATRE, ALABAMA, May 2, 2010 — On Saturday morning, barges decked with giant coils of fluorescent yellow and orange booms designed to contain the coming oil spill here bobbed among fading shrimp boats on the Bayou (which is what the Alabama coastal community is called here).

Everyone who comes to the Bayou makes a living off the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. There is no living here without it.


There must be 30 miles of these floating vinyl tubes stacked up at multiple deployment areas all along the Alabama coast. All morning, tugs and a flotilla of smaller boats let off steam, ready to get the goods on the water before high winds drive the slick ashore.

Jeff Dequattro, the Nature Conservancy’s oyster restoration project manager here in Alabama, had pulled off something like a miracle, collecting 3,500 feet of boom and pallets of absorbent material from two or three different states in 24 hours. Just enough, maybe, to intercept the first swells of oil before they coat our newly established oyster reef around Coffee Island. The boom is on board, but the anchors are still in transit — to the wrong destination, we suddenly learn. Jeff rushes off to intercept. We wait as the wind blows harder.

Read the rest at the link above