Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Lots of sharks, lots of oil seen off Bon Secour

Submerged oil at Bon Secour shoreline



FORT MORGAN, Ala. -- A two-inch layer of submerged oil hugged portions of the Gulf seafloor off the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge on Friday, a week after a smothering layer of floating crude washed ashore there.

Collecting in pockets and troughs in waist-deep water, the underwater oil was looser and stickier than the tarballs spread liberally along the beach. The consistency was more like a thick liquid, albeit one made up of thousands of small globs.
Oil-covered speckled crab with American flagView full sizeA speckled crab is almost completely encased in a thick layer of oil just offshore from the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge. Bits of trash, such as this American flag, are similarly encrusted with the thick, goopy oil found hugging the seafloor in several locations along the Gulf beach.
Unlike tarballs, which can often be picked up out of the water without staining the fingers, the submerged oil stained everything that it touched. A hand passed through the material emerged covered in oily smears. A hunk of fabric hovering near the bottom was completely covered in oil.

The Press-Register found a number of patches of submerged oil 40 to 100 feet off the beach, apparently collecting along rip currents and sandbars. The carcasses of sand fleas, speckled crabs, ghost crabs and leopard crabs were spread throughout the oil, a thick layer of the material caking the bodies of the larger crabs. Their claws looked as if they been turned into clubs made of oil.
Thumb-size sand fleas burrow in the sand where the waves wash onto the beach. It appeared that they had suffocated. Other burrowing creatures, such as the small and colorful coquina clams, seemed unaffected. Unlike sand fleas, the clams are able to close their shells for extended periods, an ability that would offer a measure of protection as oil washed across the sand above them.
Dark patches seen in deeper water Friday might also have been oil, but exceptional numbers of large sharks meant diving down to investigate was not an option. Hammerhead, bull and other sharks were schooling around a boat anchored in 6 feet of water just outside the breaking waves.
Most of the sharks in the deeper water were 6 feet long or more. Smaller sharks could be seen inside the first sandbar, in one case in a school 27 strong.
Huge schools of bait hugged the seashore, attracting large numbers of birds. King mackerel, Spanish mackerel, mullet, ladyfish, speckled trout and other fish schooled in unusually large numbers amid the sharks.
Dead fish seen onshore seemed to have collected in the areas closest to the underwater oil. It was unclear if the fish died because of exposure to the oil.
The Dauphin Island Sea Lab measured large areas of low oxygen water just off the beach at Fort Morgan last week, beginning in water around 20 feet deep. Monty Graham, a University of South Alabama scientist, theorized that the population of oil-consuming microbes had swelled, and those tiny animals consumed lots of oxygen.
Sea life begins to die if oxygen levels drop below 2 parts per million.
Fort Morgan tarballsView full sizeSmall fish are spread among the tarballs caked on the beach at the Bon Secour National Wildlfe Refuge. Thousands of tarballs were tumbling in the waves, breaking into ever smaller pieces.
"We saw some very low oxygen levels, some below 1," said Graham, of testing he conducted aboard a Dauphin Island Sea Lab research vessel.
He said that the layer of low-oxygen water closest to shore off Fort Morgan began at the bottom and rose up 30 feet.
Graham said he believed that the low oxygen levels were responsible for reports of strange behavior among fish.
"The low oxygen explains things we've been hearing, like reports of flounder swimming on the surface," Graham said.
The low oxygen levels offshore may also explain the dense aggregations of fish seen in the surf zone. The turbulent area near shore is naturally high in oxygen due to the influence of the breaking waves.
The Press-Register has heard numerous reports that suggest oil is moving beneath the surface in Alabama waters. State officials conducting shrimp trawls in the Mississippi Sound two weeks ago found oil on their nets when they pulled them. More recently, BP contractors working around Dauphin Island reported oil coming up on their anchors.

5 comments:

  1. Thank you Hurricane Creekkeeper for all that you share.

    "The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame." Saruman,The Lord of the Rings

    I just cannot believe that this is being allowed to go on and on. This is not just yet another spill which nature can detoxify from this is an open wound. Yet in the pictures that you show us at the scene of this tragedy there are only a tiny few boats which you referred to as looking like teacups which they say are scooping up oil? It IS only a show!

    If those few, little boats are scooping up oil and you can still see oil like long red snakes swarming into the water why is not the ocean full of ships scooping up oil? They say they are going to clean this up. There is no cleaning this up, this has not even stopped. Why isn’t the whole world out there stopping this?

    This affects our whole world. When the hurricane season arrives, which it will soon, all those miles and miles of big black clouds full of chemicals that they keep fueling are going to blow inland. Hurricane Ike blew rain all the way from this same Gulf of Mexico to my little Ohio and rained down a few years ago.

    Every time I pick a berry, listen to a bird or admire a flower now I wonder if this muck that we have created is going to rain down on me and mine. The thing is, it is all me and mine, this is our world that we are destroying for the mighty Lord Dollar.

    That the outcome of this is being left up to BP blows my mind, obviously they don’t care! All they care about is how much money they are going to make. Any illusions I might have had that there was a big brother out there watching out for us is now gone. The gulf should be packed with the best minds in the world to solve this rupture.

    It breaks my heart to think that those who work only from self interest, those whose hearts are filled with greed and have no understanding of the fact that what they do to the earth they do to themselves, these spiritual children are going to be allowed to kill our earth. So many people think that we are going to get raptured out of here so we won’t need the earth anyway. You know what, I just don’t think I could be happy in heaven if I knew that I had any part, ( by my lifestyle?) in contributing to rape and death of this beautiful planet earth, I just don’t think I could ever get over that.

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  2. I think this is only the beginning of the disaster pictures to come.......BP has been very good at suppressing the images, knowing most americans wont react until the see pictures....

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  3. The American flag in the oily Gulf water of Death is an OMEN of God's impending Judgment on the ungodly country that America has become. America, like many Americans of previous generations warned (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Fulbright, etc.) has allowed itself to become controlled by Israeli Zionist Satanists and their American stooges and traitors (Bush-it and ObamaRahm-a, among MANY others). 911 was the start of their overt Attack on America. The GRAND DEPRESSION, now in progress, will send America into the Abyss. Some States are already near the bottom!

    SEE! more at http://sol-godsend.blogspot.com

    "There will be hell to pay"

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  4. It's so ironic - I read every day of great scientific advances which can bring long, disease-free lives, and at the same time, there's this continuing nightmare reading like the death throes of the world! God, look with pity on your foolish children. What have we done to your beautiful creation!

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  5. The great sadness and outrage erupting, calls for the more intelligent visionaries of the human species to stand-up and "take charge" of our world.... or it will take care of itelf without us.

    There is the Jean Houston Foundation's Social Artistry Leadership program in early August in Ashland, Oregon for those of us ready to find our voice, our next destiny, a more potent self.

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