Pelicans, otters along LA shore in path of spill
CAIN BURDEAU
Oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico was starting to ooze
ashore, threatening migrating birds, nesting pelicans, river otters and
mink along Louisiana's fragile islands and barrier marshes.
Crews in boats were patrolling coastal marshes early Friday looking
for areas where the oil has flowed in, the Coast Guard said. Storms
loomed that could push tide waters higher than normal through the
weekend, the National Weather Service warned.
A top adviser to President Barack Obama said Friday that no new oil
drilling would be authorized until authorities learn what caused the
explosion of the rig Deepwater Horizon. David Axelrod told ABC's "Good
Morning America" that "no additional drilling has been authorized and
none will until we find out what has happened here." Obama recently
lifted a drilling moratorium for many offshore areas, including the
Atlantic and Gulf areas.
The leak from a blown-out well a mile underwater is five times bigger
than first believed. Faint fingers of oily sheen were reaching the
Mississippi River delta late Thursday, lapping the Louisiana shoreline
in long, thin lines. Thicker oil was about five miles offshore.
Officials have said they would do everything to keep the Mississippi
River open to traffic.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara faced questions on all three
network television morning shows Friday about whether the government has
done enough to push oil company BP PLC to plug the underwater leak and
protect the coast. Brice-O'Hara said the federal response led by the
Coast Guard has been rapid, sustained and has adapted as the threat grew
since a drill rig exploded and sank last week, causing the seafloor
spill.
The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster
in decades, threatening to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez in scope. It
imperils hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the
Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with
shrimp, oysters and other marine life.
"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press about the spill.
"I am frightened.
This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be
required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are
just mind-boggling."
Oil clumps seabirds' feathers, leaving them without insulation - and
when they preen, they swallow it. Prolonged contact with the skin can
cause burns, said Nils Warnock, a spill recovery supervisor with the
California Oiled Wildlife Care Network at the University of
California-Davis. Oil swallowed by animals can cause anemia,
hemorrhaging and other problems, said Jay Holcomb, executive director of
the International Bird Rescue Research Center in California. The spewing
oil - about 210,000 gallons a day - comes from a well drilled by the rig
Deepwater Horizon, which exploded in flames April 20 and sank two days
later. BP was operating the rig that was owned by Transocean Ltd. The
Coast Guard is working with BP to deploy floating booms, skimmers and
chemical dispersants, and set controlled fires to burn the oil off the
water's surface.
Protective boom has been set out on Breton Island, where colonial
species such as pelicans, gulls and skimmers nest, and at the sandy tips
of the passes from the Mississippi River's birdfoot delta, said Robert
Love, a state wildlife official.
The leak from the ocean floor proved to be far bigger than initially
reported, contributing to a growing sense among some in Louisiana that
the government failed them again, just as it did during Hurricane
Katrina in 2005. President Barack Obama dispatched Cabinet officials to
deal with the crisis.
Cade Thomas, a fishing guide in Venice, worried that his livelihood
will be destroyed. He said he did not know whether to blame the Coast
Guard, the government or BP.
"They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels
when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive," he
said.
"As soon as it blew up, they should have started wrapping it with
booms."
BP shares continued falling early Friday. Shares were down 2 percent
in early trading on the London Stock Exchange, a day after dropping 7
percent in London. In New York on Thursday, BP shares fell $4.78 to
close at $52.56, taking the fall in the company's market value to about
$25 billion since the explosion.
Government officials said the well 40 miles offshore is spewing about
5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day into the gulf. At that rate,
the spill could eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history - the 11
million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in
Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 - in the three months it could
take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet
underwater on the sea floor.
Ultimately, the spill could grow much larger than the Valdez because
Gulf of Mexico wells tap deposits that hold many times more oil than a
single tanker.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were focusing on national wildlife
refuges on a chain of barrier islands. "We're trying to go for the ones
where the pelicans are nesting right now," said Tom McKenzie, the
agency's regional spokesman, adding that about 900 were on North Breton.
About 34,000 birds have been counted in the national refuges most at
risk, McKenzie said. Gulls, pelicans, roseate spoonbills, egrets, shore
birds, terns and blue herons are in the path of the spill. Mink and
river otter also live in the delta and might eat oiled carcasses, Love
said. Bird rescuer Holcomb worked the Valdez disaster and was headed to
Louisiana. He said some birds may avoid the oil spill, but others won't.
BP has requested more resources from the Defense Department,
especially underwater equipment that might be better than what is
commercially available. A BP executive said the corporation would "take
help from anyone." That includes fishermen who could be hired to help
deploy containment boom.
An emergency shrimping season was opened to allow shrimpers to scoop
up their catch before it is fouled by oil. This murky water and the
oysters in it have provided a livelihood for three generations of Frank
and Mitch Jurisich's family in Empire, La.
Now, on the open water just beyond the marshes, they can smell the
oil that threatens everything they know and love. "Just smelling it, it
puts more of a sense of urgency, a sense of fear," Frank Jurisich said.
The brothers hope to get all the oysters they can sell before the oil
washes ashore. They filled more than 100 burlap sacks Thursday and
stopped to eat some oysters. "This might be our last day," Mitch
Jurisich said.
Without the fishing industry, Frank Jurisich said the family "would
be lost.
This is who we are and what we do."Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
declared a state of emergency so officials could begin preparing for the
oil's impact. He also asked the federal government if he could call up
6,000 National Guard troops to help.
In Buras, La., where Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, the
owner of the Black Velvet Oyster Bar & Grill couldn't keep his eyes off
the television. News and weather shows were making projections that oil
would soon inundate the coastal wetlands where his family has worked
since the 1860s.
"We're really disgusted," he added. "We don't believe anything coming
out of BP's mouth" Mike Brewer, 40, who lost his oil spill response
company in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago,
said the area was accustomed to the occasional minor spill. But he
feared the scale of the escaping oil was beyond the capacity of existing
resources.
Associated Press writers Holbrook Mohr in Mississippi, Phuong Le in
Seattle, Janet McConnaughey, Kevin McGill, Michael Kunzelman and Brett
Martel in New Orleans, and Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge also
contributed to this report. |