“Plastiki” On Its Way to Sydney

I’ve had several email exchanges with my friend David de Rothschild as he and the “Plastiki” move under tow along the coast of Australia, towards its final stop of Sydney. That 400 mile part of the trip concludes this weekend and the plastic-bottle boat will rest at dock there until it is recycled.

Reports on the boat’s last day at sea were confused, the reporting from Australia varied – was the “Plastiki” “rescued,” did the crew send out a “distress call” – and David wants to make it clear that nothing out of the ordinary happened last Saturday off the coast of Australia.

“We never sent a distress signal, we paid for a charter to pick us up as was always the plan.”

The sail was a remarkable success and we wait news from DdR regarding plans for both the catamaran and his next adventure.

Up Next? Deep Sea Mining

If you think the long-term impacts of the Deepwater Horizon explosion are going to be harmful on a variety of fronts, wait until they start opening up the ocean floor for copper, nickel, gold, silver, cobalt and more a mile below the surface.

Which, if the Chinese have their way, is about to happen, in international waters in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Papua, New Guinea.

So-called “deep sea mining” was first proposed as far back as the mid-1960s, in a book called Mineral Resources of the Seas by J.L. Mero. He described the potential as “limitless.” Over the next 20 years the U.S., Germany, France and others spent hundreds of millions of dollars investigating the possibilities. The Convention on the Law of the Sea created an International Seabed Authority to oversee potential mines; the Chinese have recently applied for a permit.

The possibility of mining the ocean floor 4,000 to 9,000 feet below the surface has been seriously rumbled about in recent years, especially in countries with booming populations thus resource needs. The Chinese are willing to pay for the risky and expensive operation and a Canadian company, Nautilus Minerals, is willing to undertake the labor.

(For the rest of my dispatch, go to takepart.com)

Gulf Coast Residents Still Worried, Angry, Frustrated

With the BP well apparently capped and not leaking, at least for now, I went back to a few of the Louisianans – our “voices from the spill’’ – some of whom I’ve known for years, other for many months.

I was curious if the capping had washed a big wave of relief over the Gulf States … or if they were expecting some kind of tsunami to follow on the heels of what most are regarding with cautious optimism as a positive sign.

Paul Templet recently retired as a professor of environmental science at LSU; for four years he was head of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. His experience over the years, in a state long run by the oil industry, has made him a slightly cynical realist.

He answers my question – Why did it take BP so long? – with several of his own.

“Why didn’t they have one of these caps sitting in a warehouse somewhere and put it to use three months ago. Why did they use so much dispersant, which makes the oil harder to recover. Injecting dispersants directly into the plume at the ocean floor means that the oil was distributed throughout the water column and will be difficult, if not impossible, to recover. Otherwise the oil would have risen to the surface and could then have been scooped or skimmed off the surface. But then it would have been visible and that’s why I suspect they were injecting dispersants. The booms and other stuff out there are basically useless.

“Only time will take care of the oil, but I suspect we’ll see it come ashore for years whenever we have a storm in the Gulf.”

Marylee Orr runs the state’s most effective environmental group, the 23-year-old Louisiana Environmental Action Network (L.E.A.N.). Like Templet, she skeptical if hopeful. “It seems to have worked but let’s not forget this is not a permanent fix. The relief well will still have to permanently plug the well bore so we still have a ways to go … and meanwhile we still have the crude oil slick and the dispersed oil plume coming onto shore.

Why did it take so long? She is convinced that no one ever really planned for a “worst-case scenario.”

“I almost fell out of my chair when I heard the Unified Command Center (in Houma) say there was no (plan to clean up a) worst case scenario because they didn’t believe it could ever happen.

“Also, when it comes to the clean-up, we are still using technology from 20 years ago, the exact same as when the Exxon Valdez spilled. I personally asked the EPA why there have been no advances in twenty years. And, for example, what is its plan for bio-remediation, because of all the marshes in Louisiana opposed to the beaches in the other Gulf States? We’re still not getting good answers.

One thing LEAN has noticed is an increase in suicide, substance abuse and domestic violence. “Plaquemine Parish has already seen domestic violence increase 100% since the disaster,” says Orr.

Ivor van Heerden is a coastal restoration expert. He oversaw the commission that investigated the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina and was then let go from his university research position at LSU when his report rubbed some the wrong way (by blaming the Army Corps of Engineers).

He began flyovers of the spill-impacted ocean within hours after the accident, and has been consulting with BP on how to clean up the mess.

In response to why the fix took so long, his take is that it required extremely difficult engineering, taking place a mile below the surface. “They had to fully research the problem; the integrity of the remaining riser; the structural integrity of the ocean bottom above the oil deposit; and then design a structure that would be multifaceted and allow complete closure but also the ability to bleed off oil if needed.”

His reaction to the capping is that “it is a real plus.” He also thinks the oiling of the Louisiana coastline would have been far worse already if they hadn’t somewhat successfully been managing the outflow of fresh water from the Mississippi River to combat it. “But the river is now down and the potential for serious oiling over a larger area exists. So far we have 63 miles of coastline impacted by heavy oiling.

Some locals are not as positive about the capping. “It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a dead man in my opinion,” crabber Jeff Ussury told the New York Times. He doubted the news of the capping was even true. “I started out kind of believing in them,” he said, “but I don’t believe in them at all anymore.”

“What’s to celebrate?” asked Kindra Arnesen is the wife of a shrimper from Plaquemines Parish, La., who I wrote about last week for having witnessed what BP called it’s “balloon and ponies” show.

“My way of life’s over, they’ve destroyed everything I know and love,” she said, before going on to explain, in detail, why she believes the pressure tests are likely to fail.

The most simple and direct response I got to my question (First reaction to the spill apparently being capped?) was from Dean Wilson, who lives on the edge of the Atchafalaya Swamp and is its caretaker. Dean is from Spain but has called the swamp home for the past 25 years. His two-word reply?

“Thanks God.”

“Ocean Sprawl”: the Mauling of Our Seas

Is it really possible that the planet’s blue space is at risk of being completely consumed and abused?

Given the gusher in the Gulf (86 days and counting) it is easy to imagine man having nothing but negative impact on the world’s ocean. But with 72 percent of the planet covered by salt water is it really possible that our one big ocean could truly be at risk of what some have dubbed “ocean sprawl?”

I’d like to say no, that the ocean is simply too big, that while the its fringes may suffer from man’s flagrant contempt, won’t the bulk of it be protected simply by its its depths, its enormity, its far-awayness?

Then I remind myself just how rapacious we have proven as a species.

Man’s heavy footprint on the ocean came to me the other day flying low in a helicopter south of Port Fouchon, Louisiana, headquarters of the state’s $70 billion a year oil industry. Below, everywhere I looked were scattered oilrigs, shrimpers, tankers, small fishing boats, floating docks and barges, stretching for many miles away from the coastline.

Let’s not be fooled by current events though; it is hardly just the oil industry that is threatening Planet Ocean.

Oil and natural gas are obvious villains, in part due to the BP spill, but also the infrastructure that accompanies it, giant physical rigs and infrastructure carrying resources from seabed to shore.

But we use – and abuse — the ocean in hundreds of ways, from fishing to generating electricity, from tourism to military protection. Shipping lanes collide with the migration routes of endangered whales. Fish farming booms while climate change alters ocean chemistry. Power lines, reefs, lobster traps and sunken ships compete for seafloor space. New energy sources including wave generated power and offshore wind turbines each eat up space. Every year coastal development destroys 20,000 acres of estuaries and near-coast fish habitat (Louisiana’s coastline alone loses 25 square miles a year, a football field every half hour). Urban waste runs-off into the ocean, so do millions of gallons of pesticides from farm fields. Plastics and cigarette butts are the most common types of ocean litter. And then there are those damn oil spills.

It is the cumulative impact that is most worrying. Is the ocean’s future to become some kind of watery version of Houston – paved over, horribly polluted, with no zoning, no controls.

Around the globe three billion people live within an hour of the ocean. In the U.S. the ocean that surrounds creates more than two million jobs and more than $128 billion in gross domestic product each year. One impediment to taking care of and monitoring man’s impact is because there is no one agency or policy controlling it. In the U.S. more than 140 laws are administered by six different federal departments and twenty different agencies, each operating under conflicting mandates and often failing to coordinate with one another in their efforts to “look after” our ocean and coastlines.

Within months of taking office President Obama set up a first-of-its-kind task force to put together a federal plan for the ocean and coastlines. He stocked it with some of the best and the brightest drawn from the marine biology world. Since issuing an interim report ninety days after it was first set up the task force has been largely on hold as the same team has devoted itself to the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher.

For all those good intentions, which I hope arrive at some kind of national Ocean Policy, ever since man started using the ocean – to explore, to open trade routes, for resources – he has approached the ocean with a single mindset: Out of sight, out of mind.

It is in part the ocean’s very vastness and seeming toughness that has allowed us to continue to abuse it.

That has to change, for the ocean’s sake, for our sake.

Big Oil Still Hiring

Morgan City, Louisiana – Driving old Highway 90 paralleling the Gulf Coast under a vast, super-heated blue sky filled with cumulus it’s almost possible to forget the horror that continues to gush beneath the nearby sea.

But the man-made scenery that lines the road – warehouse buildings, one after another, parking lots filled with pick-up trucks and SUVs — brings me right back to the connective tissue that links all of Louisiana: Oil.

Let’s be clear: There is really only one industry in Louisiana. Yes, fishing generates a couple billion dollars a year. And tourism, most of it focused around New Orleans and conventions, brings in more than $6 billion a year.

But all of that pales when stacked next to the $70 billion a year the oil business generates in the state and the 320,000 jobs it creates. A rigger with a high school education can, with overtime, make $100,000 a year. When workers come home from the rigs reeking of oil, they chide their buddies at the bar: “Smell that money!”

(For the rest of my dispatch and new video blogs from the Gulf at takepart.com.

Live from Lafayette …

It’s a steamy, early-summer day in Southern Louisiana – expecting the “heat index” to top out today around 108 degrees F! – but it’s good to be back on the ground here. I’ve been coming every few months for the past two years, producing a documentary film, and it’s started to feel like a second-home. One with really good food … and music.

Though yesterday evidence of the impact of the oil spill came home when I went in search of an oyster po-boy. At the first couple stops café owners apologized for not having any … a first in their lifetimes … because the oyster beds have been shut now for more than five weeks. When I finally did find one something didn’t feel quite right, so I asked: The oysters came from … somewhere else, outside Louisiana, was all the server could offer with a shrug.

While the spill is conversation number one (with World Cup football second), I can feel a kind of creeping frustration/resignation settling in.

In Lafayette, which has more oil-industry jobs per capita than anywhere other than Midland, Texas, there’s a fair amount of rumbling in the bars and on the street corners about the deepwater drilling moratorium, with a majority believing the New Orleans’ federal judge’s decision to start up again is a good one.

There’s lots of concern about where all that oil waste is heading. A few people have brought up concerns about the health of the workers involved in the clean-up; apparently BP is against the workers wearing respirators on the job because 1) it looks bad on camera and 2) they’re afraid people with their faces covered are going to overheat and collapse.

There’s concern too that while BP appears to be saying all the right things right now in regard to its long-term commitment and willingness to pay all “legitimate” claims that six months from now, a year from now … locals will be locked in fights with the mega-company for their money.
And still the well keeps gushing ….