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any of you guys down in the gulf? while im sure news reports are always accurate... har-t-har har... just wondered if i could get a locals perspective on the situation, as it doesnt look good. from what i gathered if the latest attempt to shut that off fails, the next fix will take two weeks to even attempt!!
Regarding what we *can't* see, what "we think" now, isn't worth spit. Time, and patience, will let us know in due course what the real outcome will be. No instant gratification on this one, except of course the considerable gratification that we no longer have a gusher gushing.
I don't have enough patience to try counting the number of posts here in which some seem to be convinced of complete doom resulting from this spill, dispersant use, the government or various combinations of the above. Not to mention the various self-proclaimed experts quoted here who somehow can predict the future.
The credible environmental assessments have only just begun and typically take years to produce quantifiable results.
In the meantime, all we really know is there has certainly been an economic impact for everyone involved or effected.
I'm going diving a few miles off Pensacola on Sunday, and intend to swim off the beach afterwards, too, since I've heard it's pretty clean. Gotta support the mid-Gulf recreation industry as a civic duty, right?
Might as well "enjoy the present", since grousing on the internet isn't all that uplifting...
I'll report back, of course, with the results of this scientific research.
Dived two sites, 8-10 miles SE of Pensacola ship channel, 100 feet and 80 feet, respectively. Then went for a swim off Perdido Key Beach, where the National Seashore is.
No visible oil anywhere, in the water or ashore (and I looked), plenty of fish everywhere, including large teeming groups of bait fish on surface. And if I drank any Corexit, it had neither taste nor side effects ;-)
So, if you're able, and inclined, to get away from your keyboards, come be a tourist on these beautiful and underpopulated shores with shops that need your business. Anything east of Orange Beach is a "go".
There is an AP article in today's St Pete Times citing the "plight" of hundreds of fisherman in the area who BP has been paying $1500/day (fifteen hundred dollars per day) for the past 3 months. Do the math.
Don't believe everything you read in that rag they call a news paper. Your one of the few that still read it. Not to mention you used the two letters that are the poster child for useless media. AP ! They haven't reported real news but an agenda only for a long time.
The facts are on the local news here every night. Here's one in many.
Sadly the waterfront, marshes and beach in your part of the world are trashed for many years, mark my word. Solutions not politics will save the day, but acceptance of that idea is not here yet, and may not be with our leadership. No amount of "cleanup" or lawsuits is going to make it right
Don't disagree..but solutions here in Louisiana have be far and few between....the nation has no problem taking our natural resources and trashing the coast for the last 60 years but could case less in helping save the wetlands that use to protect us from hurricanes.. Hell at the rate we have been going Baton Rouge will be on the coast in 20 years
I could see paying $1,500 a day for a vessel with crew. Even a small fishing boat with a single captain on board typically charges about $600 - $800 for an 8 hour fishing trip. If they are cleaning up oil, then they would need additional crew.
Old-School Oil Clean-Up
A worker scoops oil by hand in the Chinese port city of Dalian, where a spill of almost half-a-million gallons of crude on the northeast coast was, by week's end, reportedly under control.
Gulf Compensation Chief Retreats From Promises to Speed Claims Process
Just over two weeks ago, Kenneth Feinberg took over the process for handling damage claims from the Gulf oil spill, pledging to cut down the response time from BP's widely criticized system to two days for individuals and seven days for businesses that file fully documented claims.
Earlier this week, Feinberg apologized to those affected by the delays. Feinberg said that while many claims could not be processed because people hadn't sent enough documentation, he acknowledged that his staff was falling behind even in managing fully documented claims.
There are still some pockets of weathered oil scattered throughout the northern Gulf region which are not transportable and are being removed at a reasonable pace. The vast majority of the spill has been dispersed throughout the water column and apparently been consumed by endemic oil eating microbes without significant degradation of oxygen levels as was originally feared. Although this was the largest spill in the U.S. and therefore caused some hysterical fears of environmental disaster, it is following the same pattern of other similarly sized spills in the Middle East and Africa where natural degradation mitigated most of feared impact.
The environmental impact assessment has only just begun and will take many months to a year before any real evidence is produced quantifying the impact.
As I said previously, the actual environmental impact of a spill and it's volume are mutually exclusive things. The focus on size is too simplistic a measure of impact. Unfortunately, lots of people can't seem to comprehend the significance unless there is a number.
And you will keep waiting. You Sir are a non entity. You don't matter. Your refusal to accept the most fundamental facts of the situation excludes you from any conversation.
But enjoy your wait.:laugher Your to funny.
Perfect example of the failure of our elementary school system! - it's you'retoo funny. But you couldn't have chosen a more appropriate or entertaining ending.
my "e" some how fell off or has gone missing now saying sea not blues ........ hope some joker doesnt move my last letter in front of ...not ..... lol.... luvs joni....
"We still are seeing sick fish offshore and the USF survey confirmed our findings of 2 to 5 percent of red snapper being affected," James Cowan, an oceanography professor at Louisiana State University, said in an email to the Tampa Bay Times.
In addition, Cowan said, laboratory studies of those sick fish "are beginning to trickle out that show that chronic exposure to oil and dispersant causes everything from impacts to the genome to compromised immune systems. Similar findings … are being found in shrimps and crabs in the same locations."
While Murawski is cautious about saying there's a connection, Cowan, who has been studying fish in the gulf for 25 years, said, "I absolutely believe these things are connected to the spill."
A lot of the stuff they talked about in the newspaper article takes place in locations where there was not an oil spill. Read the article carefully and you'll quickly discover the biologist, like most marine scientists, does not provide any concrete information. There was no information on tissue samples that indicated anything other than bacterial infections, which are very common in the Gulf's "Dead Zone", a biologically dead area of the Gulf that is growing by leaps and bounds. The above article can be found at USF study finds more sick fish in oil spill area than rest of Gulf of Mexico - Tampa Bay Times
In the article, the biologist talked about 2 to 5 percent of the red snapper being diseased. In contrast, 90-percent of the striped bass in Chesapeake Bay are infected with mycobacterium, a wasting disease that carries a huge mortality rate, and there are known cases of humans contracting the disease from handling striped bass. Gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling about our waterways, doesn't it.
Now, the person that talked about canyons in the Gulf of Mexico, how about some specifics on the location(s) of the canyons--particularly those located in the vicinity of the spill. I can't seem to locate any Gulf of Mexico canyons on my charts of that area, but I'm going to take a better look tomorrow afternoon when I find some free time.
Cheers,
Gary
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