The worst thing about the dead zones now growing annually at the mouths of more than 400 rivers around the world is that the causes aren’t local, but originate in farm fields and urban areas sometimes more than a thousand miles away.
Take the very first identified dead zone, for example, at the mouth of the Mississippi River where it dumps into the Gulf of Mexico. Each year during the summer months it stretches from Mississippi to Texas covering an area the size of New Jersey and killing everything – fish and plant alike – in its path.
But the roots of the Gulf’s oxygen-sapped dead zone — primarily phosphorous and nitrogen – is mostly fertilizer runoff delivered from far away by a river system connecting 31 states to the north.
It is yet another example of the Gulf being treated like America’s toilet bowl; flush the farm fields and gutters in Illinois and Pennsylvania, and eventually all the crap ends up off the coast of Louisiana.
But legislating polluted runoff is tricky, whether by state or federal law. Imagine the governor of Louisiana asking his counterparts in Iowa and Ohio to mandate their farmers use less fertilizer; it’s a tough sell.
Yet there are increasing examples of efforts being made locally and by individuals to slow contributions to the mess that is quickly helping to kill off the Gulf … and other estuaries around the country and the world.
(For the rest of my dispatch, go to takepart.com)
Recent reports about a spike in ocean temperatures off Sumatra and subsequent coral reef die-off takes me back to a pair of recent visits to the Maldives, where a similar mysterious warming killed off its reefs a dozen years ago. A just-released report by the Wildlife Conservation Society suggests as much as 60-80 percent of the reefs across the Andaman Sea from Sumatra to Thailand and Myanmar have been bleached by temperatures risen to as high as 93 degrees F, about nine degrees warmer than average.
The WCS labeled it one of the “most rapid and severe coral mortality events ever recorded.” While occasional cyclical phenomenon can drive sea temperatures up, Andrew Baird of James Cook in University in Townsville, Australia, contends this rise is “almost certainly due to global warming.”
I first went to the Maldives in 2004; just weeks after tsunami waves had nearly drowned the 1,192-island nation. Ironically the coral reefs surrounding the islands had protected them, absorbing the brunt of the wave. Sadly most of those reefs were already badly damaged. In 1998, thanks to shifting ocean patterns, which was then associated with El Niño, sea temperatures rose above 90 degrees F for more than two weeks, badly “bleaching” the coral (the killing of the symbiotic algae that lives within the coral and gives it color).
Between seventy and ninety percent of all the reefs surrounding the Maldives 26 atolls were estimated to have died as a result. Last spring I returned to the Maldives to see how the reefs were doing.
Swimming along the coral edge of what transplanted marine biologist Anke Hofmeister calls her “home reef” the line dividing the shallows and deep blue was exact. To our left in the brightly sunlit coral, hundreds of shiny reef fish darted and fed; in the dark blue, just to our right, which descended straight down a dramatic hundred foot wall, swam big jackfish, tuna and red snapper, each over one hundred pounds. An occasional spotted eagle ray elegantly flapped its way past in the dark blue below the surface of a calm Indian Ocean.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
A lead NOAA scientist responsible for the agency’s report suggesting that “74 percent of the oil” spewed by the BP gusher had already disappeared is now suggesting the numbers in the government-released document were drawn from incomplete science.
Few in Washington and certainly no one in the Gulf believed the account when it was first leaked to the New York Times on August 5, for simple reasons: There’s still lots of oil visible on beaches, in marshes, on the surface and below. And there are increasing numbers of scientific studies that immediately call into question NOAA’s clearly optimistic numbers.
Last week a University of Georgia report claimed “70 to 79 percent of the oil is still in the Gulf,” based on 57,000 readings taken during a recent 10-day voyage. Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute report identifying a 22-mile long plume of hydrocarbons spanning 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf.
It seems that Bill Lehr, senior scientist with NOAA, may actually agree more with those statistics than the NOAA report he helped write.
Late last week Lehr told a Congressional hearing that the optimistic report from his agency was rushed and never intended to be released to the public. He said the report was intended to inform “the emergency response, not the general public.”
“I would say most of (the oil) is still in the environment,” Lehr told the house energy and commerce committee. In a conference call with congressional investigators, Lehr reportedly said some scientists had concerns with the report and that it was the White House that decided to release the stats, not the agency. A NOAA spokesman later said Lehr’s comments were “false.”
Massachusetts congressman Ed Markey, who has been the BP gusher’s sharpest critic in Washington, railed against Lehr, suggesting NOAA’s report had given people “a false sense of confidence” and wondered why the agency had released any numbers when Lehr admitted the research was not complete. Lehr’s boss, respected ocean scientist Jane Lubchenco, continues to stand behind the sunny statistics while admitting the agency’s “comprehensive report” would not be delivered for another two months.
Markey is calling on NOAA to share the data it based its report on so that independent scientists can assess its credibility.
With the upcoming five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (August 29), the Gulf Coast is bracing for another media onslaught.
Network anchors all have their tickets (each competing for turf with Anderson Cooper along New Orleans’s Riverwalk), CNN is broadcasting a two-part special (“New Orleans Rising”) and next Monday/Tuesday HBO will air Spike Lee’s four-hour documentary, “If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise.”
As if the place hadn’t gotten enough attention during the past four-plus months, the Gulf States can’t stay out of the news these days, which is a good thing. Given the continuing debate over just how much oil is still stewing in the ocean it deserves to be in the headlines for a long time to come.
As I predicted a few days ago, every day seems to bring a new estimate on just how much of the oil spewed by BP is still out there. The statistics grow evermore confusing. The government says “74 percent of the oil is gone.” A University of Georgia team claims “79 percent is still there.” And today a report in Science – which the Times calls “the most ambitious paper to emerge yet” – casts grave doubt on the government stats and suggests there is a huge plume of oil two miles long floating beneath the surface, which will pose problems for the ocean, wildlife and man for months, possibly years, to come.
While that chatter dominates Gulf-related headlines, I think now is an appropriate time to reflect on all the other bad shit impacting the region on top of the multi-million gallons of crude that were recklessly dumped into it.
The Deepwater Horizon explosion and sinking was one of two sizable man-made disasters that will have long-lasting impact on Louisiana shores. The other goes back to 1927, when man (i.e. the Army Corps of Engineers) began his failed attempt to “control” the Mississippi River. The twin debacles, combined with a historically corrupt and inattentive state government, has assured that despite the cantankerous quality of life that makes the state the most unique of all fifty is also treated like America’s toilet bowl.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
When, on August 4th, President Obama’s chief environmental adviser Carol Browner put the White House stamp of approval on stats claiming “74 percent of the oil spilled into the Gulf” had already been cleaned up, captured, burned, dispersed, evaporated, degraded or dissolved in the water … most of the people I know living along the coastline of Louisiana rolled their collective eyes.
Mike Roberts, a shrimper who lives on Barataria Bay – the hard-hit marshlands leading to the Gulf – said, “they obviously haven’t been to my backyard recently, which is still caked with oil.”
His wife Tracy Kuhns, Louisiana Bayoukeeper and director of the local family fishermen’s association, has been outspoken about BP and the government’s math since the gushing began. “They haven’t gotten it right from the very beginning when they told us only a few hundred rather than a few thousand barrels were leaking a day … why should we trust them now?”
On the other side of the estuary, P.J. Hahn, a Republican politician whose job it is to look after the future of the coastline of Plaquemines Parish and has been out on the water virtually every day since the gusher first began, said of the federal government numbers “they sound just too good to be true.”
One thing those “too good to be true” stats helped produce were some very optimistic news reports. “Sunshine is evaporating the oil, and bacteria are rapidly digesting it,” reported Bloomberg Businessweek.
“In a year or two we can forget this ever happened,” Roger Sassen, an adjunct professor of geology and geophysics at Texas A&M, told Bloomberg. “The fact that the Mississippi is the drainage ditch for the fertilizers and nasty agricultural chemicals of the entire central U.S. is much worse than this transient spill.”
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
I hadn’t thought much about baptism since the last time I watched “The Godfather” until I saw a photo last week of 29 Marines (the Ohio-based 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment) on the verge of setting off for Afghanistan being given full rites in the Pacific Ocean near Camp Pendleton.
Which made me wonder exactly how many people use the ocean for baptism … and where did the notion of being plunged underwater to affirm ones Christian beliefs come from anyway?
Marines interviewed said they believed the rite would help them “perform our job the way we need to in a very challenging environment” and bring them home safely. Initially I thought their Sunday morning full-submersions — administered by the battalion’s commander and part of what he dubbed Operation Sword of the Spirit, a program meant to prepare the battalion for duty in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province — was unusual. (The widely promoted event angered some Marines in Afghanistan, who saw it as ready-made p.r. for the Taliban to use to pump up a “Holy War” theme.)
But the almighty Google proved that notion wrong. Apparently many times a week somewhere along the edge of the country – from Ocean Grove and Pacific Palisades in California to the sand beaches of Florida and New Jersey – Christians, both adults and children, walk voluntarily into the sea to have their beliefs affirmed.
Typical mass-baptism announcements are abundant and include the Where (Pier Ave and the Strand, Hermosa Beach); the Date (July 11, 2010); the Time (3 p.m.), the Features (kids, open to all, volunteer) and Dress Code (ladies, wear dark t-shirt and shorts over your swim suit; guys, please wear a t-shirt and swim trunks).
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
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