Hope on the Horizon
Hope on the Horizon
It’s safe to say that John Andrew Nelson has eaten more oysters than anybody I know. .. John carries a pocketknife that is sharpened in such a way to gently pry oysters open from the backside or lip. Amateurs like me wrestle oysters open from the hinge and try to avoid jamming the knife deep into our palms...again. Simply put, John Andrew is a pro.
We call him John Andrew so as not to confuse him with his daddy, John Ray Nelson. The Johns are third and fourth generation owners/operators of Bon Secour Fisheries, a thriving seafood business in Bon Secour, Alabama, that sells shrimp and oysters all over the Southeast. Back in 1885, John Andrew’s great-great-grandfather, Frank Nelson, started the business with one boat, a hope, and a prayer. Now, 125 years later, the hoping and praying has become part of the daily routine.
John and I go back more than 30 years and when I think of all the oysters we’ve eaten together, it puts me in the mind of Bubba telling Forrest Gump about shrimp. We’ve eaten fried oysters, grilled oysters, raw oysters, oyster stuffing, oysters with blue cheese, oysters with bacon, steamed oysters, baked oysters, oysters in turkey sauce; the list goes on and on. Back in our wild, bachelor days, John would use the ice blower at the fishery to fill the bed of his truck full of ice, oysters, and beers. We solved a lot of problems of the world shucking and drinking around the back of that truck. On one memorable oyster-eating night John decided to educate a few of us to the ways of the hoity-toity crowd on the Chesapeake Bay. We shucked a bunch of oysters and threw them into a bowl of ice water and vinegar while John finely chopped a purple onion. We put the ice-cold oysters on a cracker with the onions and ate until we looked eight months pregnant. I added a new notch to my belt, Chesapeake-style oysters. Those oysters came from a place call Bay Round, Louisiana. They were absolutely perfect.
Now that the Deepwater Horizon fiasco has caused more pain and suffering than a season full of hurricanes, I wonder if Bay Round will ever produce perfect oysters again. John and his life’s work at Bon Secour Fisheries are in a state of flux. He’s one of the millions of folks affected along the coastal region. His livelihood is threatened and who knows what the future holds for those of us who equate eating shrimp and oysters with sheer happiness.
The Economy and Ecology
This oil catastrophe evaporated the summer tourism season from Gulf Shores, Alabama, to Panama City, Florida. Of that, there is no doubt. At least hurricanes usually come in September, after the peak-earning summer months for local businesses. The timing of this disaster – late April – couldn’t have been planned better. That is, if the devil was doing the planning. It started a month before Memorial Day weekend, the big kickoff weekend of the summer. If the relief well works, it will be just in time for the new school year to begin, thus keeping people and their tourism dollars away from the Gulf Coast all summer. The claims from restaurants, hotels, bars, and every other form of commercial interest are piling up and business owners are on edge wondering if BP will really pay. Lawsuits will inevitably follow and drag on for years. The economic storm will rain down upon the area for a long time.
There’s no denying the economic disaster but what no-one knows for sure is the scope of the ecological impact. Will the Gulf of Mexico just die? Probably not. Or will it bounce back? Maybe. Or will there be some period of purgatory followed by a slow recovery? It’s a mystery that even the scientific community wonders about. Dr. Bob Shipp of the University of South Alabama says, “The Gulf of Mexico will never be the same.” He’s particularly distressed over the use of dispersants that integrate the oil down into the water column. He says they are damaging the fertile crescent of the upper Gulf of Mexico between Venice, Louisiana, and Apalachicola, Florida. The devastating effects are not just pronounced in the nation’s largest estuary for shrimp and oysters but also spawning for marine life such as flounder, speckled trout, red fish, and blue fin tuna are also significantly affected. Again, the timing of this spill is tragic as it’s happening during the spring egg hatch.
On the other hand, Dr. George Crozier of the USA Dauphin Island Sea Lab says this is not “the death of the gulf” and that the massive volume of water both in the gulf and flowing into the gulf will allow it to survive a Dead Sea scenario the malicious news media always hypes. Mother Nature is a powerful healer, and many surmise a hurricane may do what BP and the government have failed to do.
Tell Me Something Good
We all know the oil gusher is bad. The media has made sure of that. When Pensacola Beach was hammered by oil chunks pushed onto the white sand by a tropical storm, a photo of Governor Charlie Crist holding a tar mat appeared in 542 newspapers. That’s disgusting. Not the tar mat but the negative aspect of the media coverage. At least 99 percent of the news stories focus on the negative – the oil-soaked animals, jobless people, and whatever downtrodden, depressing piece of dung they can find. The question is, are there any silver linings? Strangely, the answer is yes.
While we’ve all seen news reports of oil slicks blanketing Louisiana, John Andrew estimates that as much as 80 percent ofthe marshes have not been impacted, leaving hundreds of square miles of unaffected bayous in West Louisiana and East Texas and beyond. As bad as this spill is, much of the marshland along the Gulf Coast will never feel the full impact. Millions of acres of oyster grounds could go untouched.
It also helps that most oysters reefs are typically anywhere from three or four feet to as much as 10-to-15 feet deep, allowing floating oil to pass over the top – so long as the slicks are eventually scooped up and kept from damaging fragile sea grasses.
“We’re still getting oysters this summer from beds in Louisiana and Texas that are unaffected,” John Andrew said. “We’ll get plenty of good oysters this winter, too. You have to understand how vast those areas in Louisiana and Texas are and some of the best areas are more than 200 miles away from the spill.”
That sounds good for oyster lovers like me but what about the general seafood-eating public?
“All seafood, and especially oysters, has had rigorous tests for years,” John Andrew said. “We’ll have even tougher testing now to make sure any seafood we sell is safe.”
Point Clear, Alabama, resident, Jimbo Meador, (see last issue, Kayak Fishing and the Environment) also symbolizes the local passion for the area. Jimbo works with Dragonfly Boatworks in Vero Beach, Florida, and has been at the forefront of the cleanup effort, equipping flats boats with electric motors to quietly approach injured birds for rescue. At first, the Dragonfly SWAT (Shallow Water Attention Terminal) boats got a lot of press because they were funded by Jimmy Buffett. Then Jimbo and Jimmy discovered that government regulations prevented anyone other than U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials from retrieving birds. Even Audubon Society experts and scientists were banned., but passionate people are not easily dissuaded.
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife was just doing their job,” Jimbo said, “but those rules were made for normal times and this is a time of crisis.”
In order to save oiled birds and stay within the law, the first SWAT boat was donated to the Friends of Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge. They, in turn, are loaning the boat to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife to use until they don’t need them anymore.
“It was a little complicated but the main thing was to save the birds,” Jimbo said. “We found a way to get it done and I’m just thankful the U.S. Fish and Wildlife is working with us.”
A second SWAT boat has been built and Dragonfly will build more if others want to donate the $43,000 for boat, motor, and trailer. “This is the only boat I know of specifically built for recovering birds,” Jimbo said. “I’m hoping BP steps up and pays for a few.”
Jimbo and his team are also investigating a way to spray birds with oil-eating microbes that are found naturally in the Gulf of Mexico. These microbes do not damage the bird’s natural oils but only the petro carbon oils. This allows the cleaning process to begin as the birds are being transported to the cleaning facilities. “It is important to look at the positive things happening and get away from the negative,” he said. “It is the biggest crisis we have ever had, but if everybody pitches in we can do some good.”
Local Knowledge
Before the oil arrived on Florida and Alabama’s shores, local authorities placed booms around sensitive areas. The basic floating orange booms and white absorbent booms we see scattered around are barely effective in calm waters and have proven utterly useless in rough seas and places like Perdido Pass at Orange Beach, Alabama, where the tide gushes in and out at up to six-to-eight knots. The volume of water pushing through the narrow passage under the Alabama Point Bridge is unstoppable unless someone figures out how to convince the moon and sun from causing tidal changes.
Local folks came up with a solution to build a beast of a boom – an all-pro, middle-linebacker, stud boom made of steel and heavy duty nuts and bolts – and Thompson Engineering out of Mobile, Alabama, was brought in. The company is run by the ironically-named Henry Seawell, who grew up on these waters and knows the ebb and flow of the politics as well as the tides.
“We looked at it from an engineering point of view,” Seawell said, “and built something strong enough to withstand the tides and still channel the surface water and oil so that it wouldn’t get into the estuaries. It also had to be very intricate and sensitive to float property, gather the oil, and allow the water to pass.”
Nothing like it had ever been built anywhere else in the world and it worked like a champ. Local knowledge goes a long way.
“We built a prototype for the industry. This probably won’t be the last spill in our lifetime and now there’s a system that is proven to protect our sensitive estuaries.”
Despite an early season hurricane (Alex) that passed by and went to Texas, and a run-in with a waterspout, the entire system was designed, fabricated, installed, and fully-functional in just 19 days. Perhaps BP could take a page from that calendar and speed their process along.
Divers observing the boom have determined that the oil is collected in the upper 16 to 18 inches of the system which consists of a 36-inch pipe and 18-inch fins extending under the water. The boom floats half under and half above water so its total submergence is three feet below the surface.
Dozens of other solutions have bubbled up from all points of the compass. Filter cloth that allows water to pass through but catches oil is being utilized to protect wetlands. Even hay and peat moss have been utilized. To rely completely on dispersants and skimmers is not enough. All technologies need to be employed, even if it’s unconventional. Maybe especially if it’s unconventional.
While much of the emphasis of the spill has been on beaches and marshes, Dr. Guy Harvey worries most about the fishery. “The blue fin tuna particularly comes to mind as its spawning ground is near the origin of the spill. This species is already severely overexploited in the western Atlantic. While the adults of all pelagic species can avoid the oil, the juvenile stages are more like air-breathing turtles, sea birds, and mammals that have to interact with the surface.”
“But the gulf is not a stagnant pond,” Harvey points out. “Billions of gallons are gushing through the Yucatan channel between Cuba and Mexico every hour. It’s more like a massive river flushing out the Gulf basin with nutrient-rich, clean water coming up from the Caribbean.”
“The good news,” Dr. Guy Harvey said, “is that the remaining mass of oil will be eroded through evaporation and breakdown by natural bacteria. The Gulf will bounce back.”
It may be considered more good news of this Gulf of Mexico tragedy that we will face the issue of our nation’s longtime oil dependency head-on. Since President Eisenhower started the Interstate Highway System, our automobile industry has driven our development of cities and suburbs, our steel and petroleum industry, and our American economic engine throughout our industrial age. As we enter the post industrial age, we are evolving our economy in new ways that may allow us to address some of these issues we face today.
“We have to end our dependence on oil at some point, the sooner the better,” Dr. Harvey said. “This accident is a terrible reminder that we need to turn to alternative, renewable energy sources as soon as possible. Sun, wind, and hydrogen are all available, and the technology exists to make meaningful changes over the next ten to twenty years.”
Our government’s cozy relationship with the oil industry has led us to this point and cheap gasoline has kept us hooked on the pump. We have to recognize the results of our actions. Sure BP screwed up but we all bear some responsibility.
“Nobody realizes what they have until they’re about to lose it,” Jimbo Meador said. “I’ve been preaching that for a long time, and at least this makes people appreciate what we have and encourages us to protect it.”
In the End
There’s no doubt that this crisis is as much an economic disaster as anything else. But businesses along the Gulf Coast have survived hurricanes and many will survive well enough if BP makes good on their promises. Unfortunately, a lot of folks don’t believe they will. It’s the nature of dealing with multi-national conglomerates with high-paid lawyers.
Time will tell on how well the Gulf’s ecosystem will recover. I have to believe the speckled trout and red snapper that have been so prolific over the years will thrive once again. And I hold onto the thought that one day soon I’ll feel that special tingle on my pallet of Bay Round oysters prepared Chesapeake-style.
Guy Harvey says “it takes cash to care,” meaning it takes more than talk to create change. So if you use gasoline (and we know you do), get out your checkbook and donate some money to the charity of your choice. Even a few dollars goes a long way when everyone donates. Of course, we endorse the Guy Harvey Ocean Society (www.guyharveyoceansociety.com) because we know the good work they’re doing by helping to fund the Guy Harvey Research Institute.
