Gulf Oil spill - maps

[Donna]

http://postpix.palmbeachpost.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=991197&CategoryID=50973&ListSubAlbums=0   

[MAK]

I can't even look at the poor wildlife. I'm so    and 

[Donna]

Oil from the recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico has reached the shores of the Chandeleur Islands, marking the first assault on a network of Important Bird Areas that line the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to south Florida.
 
“Rusty streaks of crude could be seen closing in on the Chandeleur Islands and small, dark patches of oily sheen lapped ashore,� reported the Telegraph earlier today. A fleet of 22 boats, comprising 10 official vessels and 12 shrimp trawlers, was dispatched to skim the surface of the slick near the islands, put down protective booms, and drop dispersant chemicals into the oil, according to the report.
 
“This is another sad milestone in a disaster unfolding in slow motion,� said Frank Gill, interim president of the National Audubon Society, in a recent press release. “This massive oil slick is churning around in the Gulf and emulsifying into a thick, deadly ‘mousse’ that will extinguish life and destroy habitats.�
 
Located 60 miles from New Orleans at Louisiana’s eastern boundary, the uninhabited Chandeleur Islands in the parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemine are part of Breton National Wildlife Refuge, the nation’s second oldest refuge and home to an estimated 34,000 birds. Designated as an IBA—that is, a site recognized by Audubon and Birdlife International as essential for the survival of one or more birds species—the Chandeleurs and greater Breton National Wildlife Refuge are a haven to an avian medley that includes waterfowl, wading birds, marsh birds, shorebirds, and neotropical species that touch down during their migrations.
 
Louisiana’s state bird, the brown pelican, nests in this IBA, and its breeding season has only just begun. Removed last year from the endangered species list, the bird—there are more than 2,000 in Breton National Wildlife Refgure—is still vulnerable, and disruptions to its breeding cycle could have serious effects on the population, according to an Audubon press release.
 
Back in 2005, Hurricane Katrina dealt a blow to the Chandeleur Islands (Breton National Wildlife Refuge) IBA, reducing the land area by about 80 percent. What remains is susceptible to accelerated erosion—and now, it appears, to oil.

P&G ships dish liquid to help clean Gulf mammals

By DAN SEWELL (AP) – 2 days ago

CINCINNATI — Procter & Gamble Co. says it has rushed 1,000 bottles of Dawn dishwashing liquid to the Gulf of Mexico region to help clean wildlife soiled by the massive oil spill.

A P&G spokeswoman says a shipment from a Kansas City plant was delivered by truck Saturday and another 1,000 bottles are being readied.

Wildlife rescue workers have used Dawn for more than three decades.

Cincinnati-based P&G has ongoing partnerships with the International Bird Rescue Research Center and the Marine Mammal Center to provide Dawn and raise funds.

In honor of Earth Day in April, before the severity of the Gulf spill was recognized, P&G stepped up airing a television commercial tied to fundraising for bird rescue efforts.

[Donna]

PLAQUEMINES PARISH, LA (WAFB) - Another wildlife victim was rescued off the Louisiana coast. A brown pelican was found Monday on Storm Island, just east of Venice. The pelican was covered in oil.

The bird is being cared for and fed by Tri-State Bird Rescue. The group has set up shop at Fort Jackson in Plaquemines Parish to handle this type of situation.

"If birds are oiled on their bellies and they take it to their nest it can get on eggs and kill the eggs or the young," said Jay Holcomb with the Bird Rescue Research Center.

Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service caution that thousands of wildlife are in danger from the oil spewing into the Gulf.

[Donna]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/photogalleries/100506-nation-animals-oil-spill-gulf-pictures/#gulf-oil-spill-wildlife-threatened-least-tern_19950_600x450.jpg  story and pics here

[Donna]

HOUSTON, May 6 (Reuters) - Oiled birds, including gannets and brown pelicans, have been found on Louisiana's Chandeleur Islands, the first area to be hit by a growing oil slick in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, an official said on Thursday.

[MAK]

 

[Donna]

Yesterday we travelled by boat to Breton Island, one of several barrier islands in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge.  Oil booms surround this tiny island, in hopes of keeping the looming oil spill at bay.  And for good reason.

Breton Island provides habitat for an incredible diversity of birds, including migratory songbirds, seabirds, nesting wading birds, shorebirds and waterfowl. At least 23 species are regularly found here and 13 of those species, such as brown pelicans, laughing gulls, and terns, regularly nest on the various islands in the refuge. It is home to the largest tern colony in North America. Many of these species, including the pelicans and terns, are beginning or are at the height of their nesting seasons.

You can see many of these birds in this footage we captured on May 5th.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOUJ8Qp-H2Y&feature=player_embedded  Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-SLknqo5ok&feature=PlayList&p=99D80C24103F7940&playnext_from=PL&index=0 Oil slick video  horrible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRlK3iUyLx8&feature=channel  Dolphins swimming in oil slick

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH4I1a5vg3w&feature=player_embedded#!   BP (NYSE:BP) has released footage of their remote operating vehicle (ROV) successfully capping one of the three leaks that is pouring an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the waters off the Gulf of Mexico.

I just couldn't watch all of the last video....it's awful. 

[MAK]

 

[Donna]

Poor animals......I feel awful for them! It's just going to get worse. 

[Annette]

  

[Donna]

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — He had the misfortune of being the first seabird found coated in toxic oil from the huge Gulf of Mexico spill, yet rescuers nicknamed him "Lucky."

On Monday, the male Northern Gannet will live up to his nickname, when wildlife officials who rehabilitated him release the young bird, along with a rescued brown pelican which had also been coated in a black sheen, back into the wild -- and out of reach of the unfolding disaster.

The gannet, a long-beaked bird known to dive from high altitude into the sea to catch its prey, was found in the gulf April 27 near the site where the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank after a huge explosion and fire set off one of the worst oil spills in US history.

Lucky was about 80 percent covered in oil, giving an orange appearance to the normally white bird with a yellow crest. Experts at the Bird Rehabilitation Facility at Ft. Jackson, Louisiana, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, gave him their full attention.

"He was thin and dehydrated, so wildlife veterinarian Dr. Erica Miller gave him intravenous fluids several times, as well as oral fluids and Pepto-Bismol for oil he may have ingested," officials coordinating the oil spill response said in a statement.

The pelican received similar treatment after he was found May 3 on Stone Island, a barrier island just off the Louisiana coast. After being shuttled to the Ft. Jackson facility by helicopter, he was treated with IV fluids, hand-fed fish, and scrubbed of the sheen covering his body, which allowed his natural water-proofing to return.

He was released to an outside pool where he has been gaining weight, the officials said in a statement.

With BP struggling to get the huge spill under control, leaving hundreds of species of animals threatened, the announcement of the bird releases came as one of the few pieces of good news in an environmental tragedy growing steadily worse, with an estimated 210,000 gallons of crude spewing into the gulf each day.

The brown pelicans are of particular concern because they were just removed from the endangered species list last year.

The two birds will be released Monday in Florida's Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, site of the Indian River Lagoon which is described as the most biologically diverse estuary in the United States.

[Donna]

Media helicopters force Gulf birds to abandon nests

Birds in the Gulf of Mexico have a new enemy: the press. Media aircraft have been conducting illegal flights and disturbing birds over Breton National Wildlife Refuge, an Important Bird Area off the east coast of Louisiana where oil from the leaking BP wellhead has been washing ashore.
 
“We’ve done all this work to try and protect those islands with booms,� said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Chuck Underwood. “But in the end, folks flying in low and landing just to get their photographs has been disturbing the birds. In some cases, there has even been nest abandonment.�
 
Tens of thousands of birds are presently nesting and foraging on the sandy strips and marshy spits in Breton National Wildlife Refuge, making this an especially devastating time for an oil spill. Michael Seymour, an ornithologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries flew on a sanctioned flight over the refuge Thursday and noticed black skimmers, laughing gulls, sandwich terns and about a dozen brown pelicans, loafing in the sand, just paces from a slick of oil.

Brown pelicans, large graceful birds that can live for 40 years, were nearly driven extinct by the pesticide DDT in the 1960s. Just last year they were removed from the endangered species list. On Breton Island, there are presently more than 2,500 nesting brown pelicans. And if you have seen photos of them over the past few days, chances are the images were taken illegally, and put the birds in jeopardy.
 
Federal regulation prohibits “the unauthorized operation of aircraft...at altitudes resulting in harassment of wildlife, or the unauthorized landing or take-off on a national wildlife refuge.� On Friday, the refuge was closed because oil was found to be washing ashore, creating a health hazard for both animals and people. “Combine the health and human safety issues with the helicopters coming in and we have a serious problem,� said Underwood.
 
“We know it’s a great story,� added Underwood, specifically addressing journalists, “but back off a little bit here.�

Media helicopters are disturbing brown pelicans in the Gulf.

[Donna]

Reporting from Los Angeles and Biloxi
Crews were expected to spend much of the weekend assembling a mile-long pipe system leading to an underwater containment dome that by Monday could start catching the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico in a swirl of contamination.

The metal containment device, which resembles a 4-story, boxy version of the "Wizard of Oz" Tin Man, was being lowered gently Friday into position over the main leak feeding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Placing the dome is the first step in a laborious process that could easily go awry. "This is going to take a few days … and it may or may not work," said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry.


If it does work, the dome won't shut down the fountain of crude spurting from a broken pipe on the muddy gulf floor. "This is not the final solution," Landry said. But it could capture most of the oil and funnel it 5,000 feet upward to a waiting ship.

While BP moves ahead with the containment strategy, the company is also plotting how to plug the blown-out wellhead that has spewed an estimated 3 million gallons of oil since a deadly April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig.

"We're going to continue to look for every option we can find," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said.

The company has flown in 20 experts from around the world and is even reviewing suggestions from a public call-in line.

Suttles said BP has discarded some ideas for stopping the oil gusher and is now evaluating two other options. One would involve installing a new blowout preventer device over the one that failed.

The other strategy would be as simple as stuffing the broken preventer with rubber cuttings, rather like stopping up a toilet.

A company spokesman declined to comment Friday night on an Associated Press report that said rig workers have told BP investigators that the blowout was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column.

According to the AP, company interviews with the rig crew indicate that as workers released pressure from the drilling column and introduced heat to set the cement seal around the wellhead, a chemical reaction created a gas bubble and the cement around the pipe destabilized.

Industry experts have said that natural gas mixed with oil may have leaked up the long drilling pipe, expanding as it rose and then exploding with a spark at the surface.

Good weather in recent days has allowed cleanup teams to continue to skim and burn oil on the water's surface. "We are very thankful for the weather," Landry said. Crews have conducted at least four separate burns, sending billowing black clouds of smoke toward the gulf sky and consuming more than 7,000 barrels of oil. Planes dropped more dispersants to break up floating oil.

With the amoeba-like oil slick hovering just off the Louisiana coast and washing up on some barrier islands, Louisiana politicians have complained that not enough booms have been laid to protect their shores. BP officials said more than 150 miles of booms have been deployed where oil is most likely to wash ashore.

"Everyone would like to be able to boom everything. That's not possible," Suttles said.

In other developments, a spokesman for the U.S. Minerals Management Service said 30 deep-water rigs in the gulf have been inspected since the Horizon explosion and the agency has found no cause for concern.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration enlarged the boundaries of its no-fishing zone in federal waters to reflect the growing spill and extended the restrictions to May 17. But the agency said the vast majority of gulf waters remain unaffected by the disaster.

The slick, at times eerily beautiful as it creeps across the gulf in a shifting pattern of mustard and rust, moved west Friday and continued to threaten the shores of the Mississippi Delta, Breton Sound and Chandeleur Sound, according to NOAA.

Three teams were sent to inspect the Chandeleur Islands, where a sheen of oil has washed up, potentially contaminating parts of the second-oldest wildlife refuge in the national system.

"It's breaking my heart, and the smell of this water is making me nauseous," said Linda St. Martin, a Sierra Club policy consultant, as she bobbed in a boat near the barrier chain, a nesting spot for thousands of brown pelicans.

Oil first made landfall on the crescent-shaped chain Wednesday. By Friday morning, the effects were evident in lapping oil and a distinct lack of birds, said Capt. Mark Stebly, a fishing guide who has lived on one of the islands for 25 years.

The refuge is a breeding ground for thousands of birds, including brown pelicans. Hundreds of frigate birds — large dark seabirds with the longest wingspan, in proportion to their weight, of all birds — roost in the mangroves .

"It's a terrible, disgusting reddish-brown scum floating around my boat," Stebly said in a telephone interview. "It's gathering in the shallows where horseshoe crabs are breeding."

"Almost all the birds got the hell out of there; the only birds left on the island have nests," he said. "It's like a damn Twilight Zone scene."

[MAK]