The Gulf Coast continues to sing the blues after oil spill

No news isn’t always the precursor to feel-good, positive articles when it comes to the Gulf of Mexico post-Deepwater Horizon story. BP has already been mismanaging the $20 billion compensation fund that was set up to mitigate only part of the problems the residents – those a part of the natural ecosystem and those apart from it, the human communities — faced then, now and in the future. The residents of the Gulf Coast towns smeared with toxins last summer are sick, as report after report from independent journalists tell the tale of cover up and lies and persistent human sicknesses, (like We’re Poisoned. We’re Sick” by Dahr Jamail and Erika Blumenfeld, here.) “Oil in Our Veins,” the subtitle to Marc Gauthier’s “Gulf Coast Blues” film, is more apropos each day as humans are hacking up muck, experiencing flu-like fatigue, and having sharp abdominal and body pains. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, made famous nationally during the clean-up operations after the limelight of media made it down there, and shown in Marc’s film, is calling this “the biggest cover-up in America’s history.” It’s disingenuous to have thought dolphins cutting through the slurry of toxins would not be directly affected, or would give birth to absolutely healthy offspring come spring. The Gulf Coast blues is a dirge for the marine mammals, birds and turtles that gulped up huge amounts of hydrocarbons and muck from the burning surface oil and the dispersant, so-called Corexit. It’s a blues ballad that will continue for decades. Hearing recent news accounts of 29 stillborn or dead newborn dolphins washed up on shorelines and in marshes from Louisiana to Mississippi and into Alabama, after the mainstream media sort of petered out on the Deepwater Horizon blowout story in August, well, it wasn’t surprising. I’ve been a dive master and recreational diver in many parts of the world, including Baja, Sea of Cortez, Belize, Honduras, China Sea, off Thailand, and the Red Sea, as well as off Alaska and Texas. I have directly experienced the fragility of ecosystems once industrial, internal combustion man comes into the picture. I know what oil, fuel, chemicals, and sewage and factory run-off, as well as trash, do to coral systems and fish communities. BP so confidently proclaims this oil disaster as almost a “non-event” after 250 to 450 million gallons of oil and methane (pretty pathetic we can’t narrow that number down with all our gizmos, satellite telemetry and trillion dollar oil business) spewed into the Gulf of Mexico, after they poured millions of gallons of dispersant on the surface and at the damaged well head. It’s a lie, and the illnesses befalling Gulf Coast human residents are part of the cover-up of the century Nungesser told the press after seeing oil sludge come up and then get churned back into marine and shore soils as winds and tides did their bayou magic. I’ve dealt with oil globules, slicks, and junk, from plastic floating patches in pristine coves at the tip of Baja, to tsunamis of human, animal and industrial waste all over Mexico and other parts of Central America, both on the Pacific and Atlantic. I’ve been inside red tides and at the end of pulp mill discharge pipes. I’ve been with wild, unrestrained dolphins of many species, turtles, and fish, birds and marine mammals in so many places that it’s easy to project how fragile their physiologies are when up against man-made poisons. I’ve been in marshes with manatees in the tropical tideland waters of Guatemala and watched them literally cough like humans, as smoking outboard engines driving eco-tourists around their mangroves left huge blue clouds and oil slicks behind. These habitats again are fragile, and these mermaids of the sea are susceptible to incursions by both humanity and our pollution. Dolphins take in huge gulps of air, and dive for long periods of time. They eat off the shoals of fish in the Gulf. They are the top of the food chain and an indicator of bioaccumulation of such nasty things as mercury and PCBs. To think these animals, many of whom died during the oil slick BP provided the world, would somehow not bio-accumulate the toxins and succumb to the affects of bio and organic chemicals, thanks to BP, is like expecting a child brought up in a two-parent, three-pack a day household not to suffer effects of passive smoke. Those warnings on cigarette packs to pregnant mothers are based on mammalian studies. Female and male dolphins cutting through the oily Gulf last year and now after eating for 11 months the fish containing bio-accumulated toxins are easily seen akin to the same four-pack-a-day breeding stock the AMA and CDC try to re-educate. Hence, washed-up stillborn dolphins 3 feet long and dead day-old calves is not news for divers, marine biologists, fishers and smart people. The reports of BP hiring thugs to burn turtles alive and to dispose of the evidence last summer – thousands of dead birds and maybe thousands of mammals secretly torched and disposed of – are not some conspiracy nut’s domain. This is why it’s so important that Spokane residents and others in our neck of the woods see films like Gauthier’s Gulf Coast Blues, because the conversation has to continue even up against this echo chamber of tea bag party stupidity, anti-public worker legislation and the half-truth and immoral morass of mass media. (Part 1 of 2)