There are plenty of players who bear some degree of responsibility for the fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico, but in the category of "They should have known Better" the bobby prize surely goes to NOAA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was NOAA that made the initial call that European methods involving environmentally benign sorbents would not be permitted in the Gulf clean up.
That decision set up a spiral into disaster beginning with the next "benign" technology Skimmers. But anyone who has followed skimmer technology for the last 30 years knows that they just don't work well in open water where wind and waves interfere with their effectiveness. (The final report adjudges skimmers to have only captured 3% of the oil in the Gulf).
Once the sustainable or near-sustainable options for halting and cleaning the spill had been ruled out there was nothing left to do but to heave a heavy sigh and call in the burners and dispersers. Gosh, golly our backes were against the wall! We just didn't have a choice! We had to poison the Gulf to save it . . . Thanks NOAA
Now it appears that - to add insult to injury - NOAA and Shell have gotten together to make sure that the million dollar Wendy Schmidt Oil Spill Cleanup X Challenge - ostensibly created to find a real solution to the challenge of oil spills - would serve as a rubber stamp for their failed Gulf cleanup methodology. Again, NOAA and the Oil Industry players have ignored 30 years of research by the US EPA and the real life experiences of the European community and banned the use of sorbents as a method employed for the X Challenge.
according to a new article entitled "BP Oil and Corexit Dispersant Still In Gulf of Mexico"
by Linda Moulton Howe
"New evidence that Corexit dispersant is degrading very slowly while seafloor marine life suffocate covered by oil, dolphin stillborn deaths in January and February 2011 are ten times normal, and many coastal residents are sick."
“The (Corexit) dispersant is sticking around. Key dispersant chemicals
underwent negligible or slow rates of biodegradation.”
- Elizabeth Kujawinski, Ph.D., Marine Chemist,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
“When the world sees something like baby dolphins washing up
on shore, it pulls at the heartstrings, and we all want to know why.”
- Blair Mase, Marine Mammal Strandings
Coordinator, SE Region, NOAA
Someone should suggest to Blair Mase that he should ask her colleagues at NOAA if they know anything about it. The response will likely be a lot of puzzled looks - but the trail of blood and dispersants leads right to the hands of NOAA.
Marine scientists report that since January 20, 2011,
twenty-six stillborn and dead baby dolphins have washed
ashore along 200 miles of coastline from Louisiana east across
Mississippi to Gulf Shores, Alabama. The Institute for Marine
Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi, west of Keesler AFB,
gathered tissue samples from a male baby dolphin discovered dead
on the Gulfport beach Monday, February 21, 2011. Image
© 2011 by James Edward Bates/Sun Herald.
