'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

[82_28]

Massive Coral Die-Off Found Just 7 Miles from BP Oil Spill Site

The Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico brought us those gut-wrenching pictures of pelicans covered in oil, but up to now there have been mercifully few reports of the disaster causing specific large-scale damage to the Gulf environment. That may be beginning to change: This week oceanographers report a vast swath of coral about seven miles southwest of the Deepwater Horizon site that are coated in brownish-black gunk and dying off. The team says the evidence points to the oil spill as the culprit.

The scientists sailed about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research boat Ronald H. Brown, used remotely operated submersibles to survey the seafloor and find this devastation.

“The coral were either dead or dying, and in some cases they were simply exposed skeletons,” said team member Timothy Shank of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “I’ve never seen that before. And when we tried to take samples of the coral, this black—I don’t know how to describe it—black, fluffylike substance fell off of them.” [National Geographic]

Charles Fisher of Penn State, the project’s head scientist, said that the goo coating these corals 4,500 feet below the sea surface is most likely not the actual oil from the BP spill.

Instead, he suggests that it is detritus from the water that simply accumulated on the corals as they died. The researchers will be analysing samples of the brown material, as well as sediment samples and tissues from the coral and other animals, to look for significant levels of oil or dispersant. [Nature]

At the moment, Fisher’s team can’t be absolutely sure that Deepwater Horizon was the culprit in this coral die-off; those further tests may prove the case for sure. But the corals dying off all together—and so close to the oil spill—makes the BP oil spill the obvious main suspect. Says NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco:

“Given the toxic nature of oil and the unprecedented amount of oil spilled, it would be surprising if we did not find damage,” she said in a statement. “This is precisely why we continue to actively monitor and evaluate the impact of the spill in the gulf. We are determined to hold the responsible parties accountable for the damage done to the environment,” she added. [The New York Times]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80bea ... pill-site/

[Gouda]

[Presidential] Oil spill probe finds no 'conscious decision' to cut corners

November 9, 2010

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/11/08/gu ... tml?hpt=T2

Washington (CNN) -- Workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon were pushing to complete the well at the heart of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill before the disaster, but no "conscious decision" to cut corners on safety has been discovered, a presidential commission reported Monday.

"There seemed to be a compulsion to get this rig completed in that April 19th-April 20th time period," said Bob Graham, the commission's co-chairman. "And as a result of that, a number of things which might have made the outcome of this plight different were deferred or abandoned."

The undersea gusher erupted with an April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drill rig, which was completing a well for the oil giant BP at the time of the blast. The rig sank two days later, taking 11 men to a watery grave and unleashing the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The well was about 45 days behind schedule, and Fred Bartlit, the commission's chief counsel, said BP's operating costs for the leased rig were running about $1.5 million per day. Those costs were "overhanging the heads of people on the rigs," Bartlit said -- "but they don't want their buddies to get killed, or themselves."

"To date, we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety," he said.

But as the commission opened two days of new hearings into the disaster on Monday, Graham questioned why the timing was "so central" to managers that they did not examine the well's cementing job more closely.

"I would hope that tomorrow we get down to the question of just what was driving for a decision on that particular narrow 24 hours," added Graham, a former U.S. senator and Florida governor.

In its preliminary findings, the commission criticized BP for shifting its plans for capping the completed well. At one point, one of the "company men" on the doomed rig was unaware of changes being planned back on shore, staff attorney Sean Grimsley said.

Mark Bly, BP's executive vice president for safety, told the commission he and the company "don't exactly agree" with the findings.

"In our work we went through what turned out to be the eight critical things we thought had contributed causally here," he said. "We clearly identified the failure to isolate at the bottom of the well and the negative test and, subsequently, the monitoring, so we didn't see the procedures here as particular to that. We felt they were covered in the other things that we described."

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, an outspoken critic of BP, said the company has "a long and sordid history of cutting costs and pushing the limits in search of higher profits."

"When the culture of a company favors risk-taking and cutting corners above other concerns, systemic failures like this oil spill disaster result without direct decisions being made or tradeoffs being considered," Markey said in a written statement on Monday's findings. The Massachusetts Democrat leads the House Energy and Commerce committee's energy and environmental subcommittee.

Still pending are test results on the rig's blowout preventer, the massive fail-safe device that was supposed to shut down the well in case emergency. Federal authorities took control of the preventer in September and have turned it over to a Norwegian engineering firm to analyze the device "from soup to nuts," Bartlit said.

BP, rig owner Transocean and cement contractor Halliburton have pointed fingers at each other since the rig sank. As the well's owner, BP was responsible for capping the ruptured well and cleaning up the more than 200 million gallons of oil that spilled. The well was sealed temporarily in mid-July and capped permanently on September 19.

Lab test results should have prompted managers to redesign the cement slurry used to line the well, the committee reported. In addition, the Transocean drill crew also could have diverted the escaping hydrocarbons overboard or triggered the rig's emergency disconnect before the blast, which could have shut in the well and "limited the impact of any explosion and/or the blowout," the commission stated.

Managers for both BP and Transocean treated a pressure test as a "complete success" despite repeated signs showing that the cement job was not containing the high-pressure oil and gas, the commission found.

Co-chairman William Reilly, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the evidence so far indicates a "culture of complacency" on the part of both industry and regulators, including the since-disbanded Minerals Management Service.

"If we had not been complacent, I suppose the most obvious reality is we would not have experienced two full months of a gushing well leading to 200 million gallons being spilled," Reilly said. "We would not have seen Congress underfund the regulatory agency consistently over the better part of the last 20 years, and the consequent failure of MMS to rise to the challenges posed by technologies that simply became so sophisticated that they scarcely were any match for the people they were regulating."

The commission's final report is due January 11. Investigations are also under way by the Justice Department, several congressional committees and a joint Coast Guard-Interior Department board.

Unlike those agencies, however, the presidential commission does not have the power to subpoena witnesses -- an issue Bartlit raised several times.

"We get a lot of arguments," he told Graham at one point. "This is where subpoena power, senator, would be helpful, because it's going to be hard to resolve those unless I can sit people down in a room in a very professional, gentlemanly way and cross examine them and find out, you know, what's believable and what's not believable."

[Montag]

Presidential commission whitewashes BP disaster
By Jerry White

November 9, 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov20 ... -n09.shtml

excerpt:

On Monday, the chief counsel of President Obama’s commission on the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico claimed his investigators found no evidence the oil giant sacrificed safety to save money before the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon. The blowout killed 11 workers and led to the worst environmental catastrophe is US history.

“To date, we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety,” Fred Bartlit, general counsel for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, asserted on November 8. Monday was the first day of a hearing in Washington to present the commission’s preliminary findings.

Bartlit’s statements underscore the fact that the commission’s inquiry is a whitewash aimed at protecting the assets of BP and covering up for the Obama administration’s own complicity in the disaster. Should the company be found criminally negligent, it could face fines of $4,300 for every barrel of oil spilled into the Gulf. If the disaster is determined to be the result of an accident, the fine is three times less. The difference amounts to billions of dollars of savings for BP.

Daniel Becnel, a Louisiana lawyer suing BP and others, called the commission’s finding “absolutely absurd.” He added that the commission was “pasting over” the truth “because they know the government is going to be a defendant sooner or later in this litigation.”

From the beginning the Obama administration has run interference for the oil company. First it repeated BP executives’ claims that no oil leak had taken place, then it concealed the extent of the disaster, while moving to restore deepwater drilling as soon as possible. The White House has repeatedly insisted it does not want to do financial damage to BP.

In his remarks Monday Bartlit said he agreed with “90 percent” of the conclusions of BP’s own investigation into the disaster. He said, “We see no instance where a decision-making person or group of people sat there aware of safety risks, aware of costs and opted to give up safety for costs.”

Bartlit added, “I’ve been on a lot of rigs, and I don’t believe people sit there and say, ‘This is really dangerous, but the guys in London will make more money.’ We do not say everything done was perfectly safe. We’re saying that people have said people traded safety for dollars. We studied the hell out of this. We welcome anybody who gives us something we missed.”

This flies in the face of damning evidence of BP’s gross negligence and criminal behavior, including the findings of a congressional subcommittee earlier this year. There is undisputed information that BP officials ignored warnings of an impending disaster, including signs of leaking gas and oil, and tests showing the instability of the cement plug on the well. The company also made decisions about well design and materials based on cost containment, which increased the likelihood of a blowout.

In a letter to former BP CEO Tony Hayward in May 2010, the chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations Committee listed a series of company decisions that contributed to the disaster, adding, “The common feature of these five decisions is that they posed a trade-off between cost and well safety.”

[Gouda]

Exclusive: Multiple independent lab tests confirm oil in Gulf shrimp

By Stephen C. Webster
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/acti ... lf-shrimp/

Experts operating states apart confirm toxic content in not just shrimp, but crab and fish too

The federal government is going out of its way to assure the public that seafood pulled from recently reopened Gulf of Mexico waters is safe to consume [Fuck Obama], in spite of the largest accidental release of crude oil in America's history.

However, testing methodologies used by the government to deem areas of water safe for commercial fishing are woefully inadequate and permit high levels of toxic compounds to slip into the human food chain, according to a series of scientific and medical professionals interviewed by Raw Story. In two separate cases, a toxicologist and a chemist independently confirmed their seafood samples contained unusually high volumes of crude oil and harmful hydrocarbons -- and some of this food was allegedly being sent to market.

One test, conducted by a chemist from Mobile, Alabama, employed a rudimentary chemical analysis of shrimp pulled from waters near Louisiana and found "oil and grease" in their digestive tracts.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) tests, which are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have focused on the animal's flesh, with samples shelled and cleaned before undergoing examination.

Unfortunately, many Gulf coast residents prepare shrimp whole, tossing the creatures into boiling water shells and all.

"I wouldn't eat shrimp, fish or crab caught in the Gulf," said Robert M. Naman, a chemist at ACT Labs in Mobile, Alabama, who conducted the test after being contacted by a New Orleans activist. "The problems people will face, health-wise, are something that people don't understand."

Naman also found that the oil was at an unusual high concentration: 193 parts-per-million (PPM).

Though Naman's test did not provide a complete fingerprint of the chemical spectrum, his results are still "an important finding," according to Dr. Susan Shaw, a marine toxicologist at the Marine Environmental Research Institute in Blue Hill, Maine.

"193 parts-per-million of petroleum in a crustacean is very high," she told Raw Story. "You have to ask, what is the meaning from a human health perspective?

"This is another signal that oil is in the food chain in the Gulf. Oil has been found in subsea plumes, in seafloor sediments, where it will degrade very slowly and can be re-released into the food chain."

Tainted seafood allegedly headed to market

In another series of tests, Dr. William Sawyer, of the Sanibel, Florida-based Toxicology Consultants & Assessment Specialists, replicated findings of oil in shrimp digestive tracts, but he noted an even higher content of harmful hydrocarbons in the flesh of other edible creatures.

And, Dr. Sawyer said, some of his test samples came from seafood on its way to market, pulled from waters recently classified as safe for commercial fishing activities.

"They did not test the [total petroleum hydrocarbons] (TPH) in their samples," he said, calling his testing methodologies a much more comprehensive way of examining compounds present in seafood.

"The sensory test employed by the FDA detects compounds that are volatile that have an odor; we're detecting compounds that are low volatility and are very low odor," he added. "We found not only petroleum in the digestive tracts [of shrimp], but also in the edible portions of fish.

"We've collected shrimp, oysters and finned fish on their way to marketplace -- we tested a good number of seafood samples and in 100 percent we found petroleum."

The FDA says up to 100-PPM of oil and dispersant residue is safe to consume in finned fish, and 500-PPM is allowed for shellfish.

Dr. Sawyer, who has long been a vocal critic of these rules, called the government's tests "little more than a farce."

"[The FDA's safety threshold] is borderline absurd," Naman added. "It's geared so that shrimpers can go back to work, and that's great -- but if we're talking about human health and the environment, you need to proceed slowly."

The FDA ignored multiple requests for comment on this story.

Long-term health effects still unknown

Direct exposure to crude oil can cause a number of health issues for humans, but most of them are short-lived or relative and none of the potential long-term effects are guaranteed.

While the full array of effects are still being studied and debated by the medical community, crude oil does contain benzene, which can cause cancer, along with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which are toxic to the brain and nervous system.

The latter has been found in virtually all NOAA samples of Gulf seafood, but very few samples exceeded the maximum allowable levels set by federal safety regulators. Even so, according to Dr. Sawyer, PAH levels detected by the NOAA in Gulf region shrimp were almost always 10 times that of levels found in shrimp farmed inland.

The FDA recently declared that out of 1,735 samples of Gulf seafood tested from June through Sept., only 13 showed levels of residues above its allowable threshold.

It is unclear whether regular consumption of this content of oil would sicken a person, how quickly its symptoms would begin to show, or in what ways they would manifest.

The initial effects of oil toxicity from ingestion include headaches, nausea, fatigue and rapid changes in mental state, according to Dr. Cyrus Rangan, assistant director of the California Poison Control System, who spoke to The Los Angeles Times in June.

Those changes in mental state may actually be the most damaging lasting effect of the BP oil spill, according to Dr. Russell W. H. Kridel, a member of the American Medical Association (AMA) Council on Science and Public Health.

Kridel, whose specialty is actually in plastic surgery and ear-nose-and-throat disorders, spoke to Raw Story because the AMA's council has prepared a comprehensive report on the health effects of the BP oil spill.

"Most of the problems encountered [along the Gulf coast] were more mental health problems than anything else," he said. "There are respiratory health problems just from burning oil. You can get rashes from skin contact, headaches, vomiting or nausea, which has affected a lot of relief workers.

"There's a lot of chronic stress and mental health disorders too, and those last longer than the acute, short-term effects. We cannot really tell you the long-term effects, just because of lack of long-term studies."

He added that while he could not comment on evidence of oil in the digestive tracts of shrimp, some marine life have consumed oil content for centuries due to natural seepage near fault lines thought to account for over 600,000 metric tonnes of oil released across all the world's oceans every year.

By comparison, scientists with the US Geological Survey and US Department of Energy estimate BP spilled at or near 4.9 million barrels -- or approximately 666,400 metric tonnes of crude.

"[Most other oil spills] don't show any long term effects on the local populations, but the size of previous oil spills are not this large," he said. "This was the largest oil disaster in US history so I really can't say what the full effect will be."

Yet still, "no group has issued a warning or concern that it could affect human health by eating seafood," Dr. Kridel emphasized.

The AMA has been active in coordinating efforts to track the health effects of BP's oil spill. A report, recently passed by the group's house of delegates, committed the AMA to continued monitoring of spill-related health effects.Risk-factors remain

Despite declaring safety, even the NOAA's own tests show regular consumption of Gulf seafood will dramatically heighten one's intake of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

This, combined with a lack of testing for total petroleum hydrocarbons -- and questions as to whether samples were in great enough number to declare wide swaths of water safe for fishing -- should be enough to convince any skeptical eater to avoid Gulf seafood for the time being.

"I'm not eating fish. I wouldn't advise anyone to eat fish," chemist Robert Naman insisted. "[The government is] more worried about livlihoods and tourism, but I'm ultimately more concerned with human health."

Dr. Sawyer agreed: "I don't recommend eating Gulf seafood, not with the risk of liver and kidney damage," he said. "The reason FDA has not made that advisory is because they've relied on this sensory test. You may as well send inspectors out to look at the fish and say they look nice. They're sniffing for something they can't detect."

Because of the unknown nature of the threat posed, chemically sensitive populations like women, children, the elderly and people with depressed immune function or existing illness would be especially well advised to exercise caution when choosing seafood.

"Once oil enters, it can damage every organ, every system in the body," Dr. Shaw concluded. "There is no safe level of exposure to this oil, because it contains carcinogens, mutagens that can damage DNA and cause cancer and other chronic health problems. Many people in the Gulf have been exposed for months -- not just workers but residents. There are hundreds of health complaints from local people with symptoms that resemble symptoms of oil exposure.

"It will be years, possibly decades, before we understand the extent and nature of the health effects caused by this spill."

[Elvis]

Oil spill probe finds no 'conscious decision' to cut corners

Just one instance: what about the rig operator who said he objected when a BP exec told him to skip a safety test, and the BP exec replied, "That's the way it's going to be"?

The rig blew up a few minutes later.

(The operator's account is somewhere in this thread)

[Nordic]

Elvis, you don't understand, that wasn't conscious, the BP guy was .... asleep! Yeah, that's it! And he was just, uh, mumbling in his sleep! Yeah!

[Elvis]

Elvis, you don't understand, that wasn't conscious, the BP guy was .... asleep! Yeah, that's it! And he was just, uh, mumbling in his sleep! Yeah!

That's the ticket!

But really, have they not called the workers to testify? (I confess I haven't studied the proceedings.) "That's the way it's going to be" is plainly and simply cutting safety corners to save money.

[82_28]

So, out of curiosity, there's this locally owned southern/Cajun food restaurant here in town. I've never seen them really advertise before and I've never been to the restaurant, but they took out like a quarter page ad in The Stranger touting a great big Crawfish dinner sale they got going on. I haven't had "bugs" in a long time and it sounded like a cool thing to introduce my girlfriend too. Will these crawfish be safe?

[2012 Countdown]

So, out of curiosity, there's this locally owned southern/Cajun food restaurant here in town. I've never seen them really advertise before and I've never been to the restaurant, but they took out like a quarter page ad in The Stranger touting a great big Crawfish dinner sale they got going on. I haven't had "bugs" in a long time and it sounded like a cool thing to introduce my girlfriend too. Will these crawfish be safe?

Crawfish are freshwater/inland, so yes! Eating lots more crawfish these days.
A lot of crawfish farms are within rice fields,btw. It doubles the land use and mutually beneficial to both crops and crustatians. Lots of crawfish in Texas too. Not sure where you are exactly, but because of a lot of people moving outward over the years and starting businesses, Texas has a large, thriving crawfish industry as well.

[Bruce Dazzling]

BP oil spill incident commander dies in small plane crash
Published: Wednesday, November 24, 2010, 4:07 PM
David Hammer, The Times-Picayune

Jim Black, a BP incident commander for the company's Gulf of Mexico oil spill response team, died in a small plane crash near Destin, Fla., on Tuesday night, the company confirmed.

"BP extends its heartfelt sorrow to the family of our friend and colleague, Jim Black, who, along with two other family members, died yesterday in a tragic plane crash," BP America CEO Lamar McKay said in a statement.

"Jim was a devoted member of our Gulf Coast spill response team and served many years with Amoco and BP. He will be missed by all who knew him and worked with him. Jim and his family are in our thoughts and prayers."

The Coast Guard said the small plane crashed Tuesday about 7:30 p.m. in Choctawhatchee Bay.

Black, whose job at the oil giant was director of operations for the Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, spent a lot of his time during the past several months in and around New Orleans. His work as incident commander for the oil spill response took him to the Joint Incident Command Center in Robert, to another operations center in Houma and often to New Orleans.

He lived in Katy, Texas, and was heading to Destin for the holidays with his sister, Charlene Miller, and the plane's pilot, Gregory Coleman of Cedar Park, Texas. Miller was Coleman's mother-in-law.

According to a report in the Austin American-Statesman, Coleman was the first solicitor general of Texas. Miller was an assistant vice president in Texas A&M University's Division of Research and Graduate Studies.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... mande.html

[Bruce Dazzling]

happy Saintsgiving, happy Buy Nothing Day, and may God have mercy on us all

http://summerburkes.wordpress.com/2010/ ... intsgivin/

On Thanksgiving Day, I eat PIZZA and remember the genocide of native people which allowed Whitey to take over this country. I eat CHILAQUILES and remember the enslaving of millions of kidnapped Africans which allowed Whitey to rise to superpower status. I eat ASIAN NOODLES WITH SRIRACHA SAUCE and keep in mind the slow genocide of the Cajun people, and the native Americans left down in the swamp, which started on Earth Day of this year and will continue unabated because the American people are too stunned and bewildered to rise up.

I pray for Dug, whom I’m afraid to call because I hear he’s sick, but I know he’s at his country house with his family, and not in Grand Isle. I pray for Catfish Miller, who is still sick, whose blood test results were “lost” at the hospital. I pray for the souls of the BP Incident Commander and his family, who died in a plane crash, and for another scientist working on the spill, who supposedly committed suicide by administering herself a cyanide capsule in a hotel room. And Matt Simmons, of course.

Closer to home, I pray for C.J., who FINALLY got out of the Gulf and to safer land, whose blood test results came back super high with carcinogens and heavy metals. I pray he will follow the instructions from me and Holly the Shaman to the letter, and detox his ass up until he’s clean again. AND QUIT SMOKING ya heard me, C.J.? Carcinogens of a feather flock together … anyway, the Climate Change Relocation Center of Seattle now has its first Coonass relocation specimen (*but still no money). And he’s loud and proud and hilarious and he can sing just like Louis Armstrong. Look out, Seattle, yall are about to get enriched by culture. (Another benefit of genocide is race-mixing. Nothing says “enslave the underclass” like defoliating and depopulating the naturally abundant areas where they previously existed outside the realm of consumerism.)

I pray for another friend who is sick, who has been sick since the Corexit planes started carpet-bombing us, and who will continue to be sick until she leaves her ancestral home. We’re talking sinus pressures, sores in her mouth, rashes all over her body, internal bruising, bleeding out the ears and other places too private to mention… She won’t leave, though, even though she knows, and has admitted out loud, that she is subjecting herself to cancer and possibly early death, because her tyrannical abusive ex-husband won’t let her have custody of her four children, who are also breathing in the Corexit. She won’t leave her children and she can’t figure out how to get the courts to let her take her children out of harm’s way. Even if she did, she’s got no money. The seafood restaurant her family owns is low on business — even though people are still eating the seafood because they have been taught to trust their government. One by one, like my friend who serves seafood all day long but won’t ever eat it again, the people are waking up. But that doesn’t mean they’ve got the strength or resources to leave, or the nourishment or funds to stay and enjoy productive, fulfilling existences. We have killed their way of life. It’s time to atone, to tithe on our energy consumption. Please?

I pray for aNOTHERnother friend who, after decades of happy marriage, is succumbing with her other half to the stress of it all — like many couples pressure-cooking under this inordinate strain of should-I-stay-or-should-I-go, they are separating. I pray for each and every family who used to eat out of the water in their back yards, and feed their families from nature’s bounty, because they are literally starving to death. I pray for all my Gulf Coast friends, who have been sick all summer long and are still sick now. I pray for the little precious baby who has had more ear infections, runny noses, rashes, and now ‘scarlet fever’ (?) than anyone in a young life should have. I’m only listing these things off the top of my head, from the people I have talked to lately. Multiply this by the hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, and then read through the links at the end of this post very carefully.

This is some serious shit, and nobody seems to be able to know what to do about it. This is adding to the pressure — the fact that Americans aren’t outraged. They are swallowing the putrid effluence of the media circus, which has only its best interest at heart.

According to Little Grandmother, a divinely-blessed font of Native wisdom whose word I trust above ANY governmental leader, we have about two years to start actively fixing this to right, or we will be removed from this planet, because we will not be allowed to destroy it.

I know. I said I’d lean toward comedy and music from now on. But I just don’t feel like singing or dancing today.

Tomorrow, for Buy Nothing Day, well that’s a different story. That’s the day our generation starts to make things right.

Republic of Lakotah: Cooking the History Books — The Thanksgiving Massacre:

In 1637, the Pequot tribe of Connecticut gathered for the annual Green Corn Dance ceremony. Mercenaries of the English and Dutch attacked and surrounded the village; burning down everything and shooting whomever try to escape. The next day, Newell notes, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony declared: “A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children.” It was signed into law that, “This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots.

The Pequot massacre came after the colonists, angry at the murder of an English trader suspected by the Pequots of kidnapping children, sought revenge. rather than fighting the dangerous Pequot warriors, John Mason and John Underhill led a group of colonists and Native allies to the Indian fort in Mystic, and killed the old men, women, and children who were there. Those who escaped were later hunted down. The Pequot tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had brought their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot “War” killed all but a handful of remaining members of the tribe.”

[2012 Countdown]

More Concern After Shrimp Boat Hauls in Oil with its Catch
by Debbie Williams
Published: Mon, November 22, 2010 - 5:36 pm CST
Last Updated: Mon, November 22, 2010 - 6:06 pm CST
The shrimp boat, "Our Mother" that pulled oil up with its catch of royal reds over the weekend is in Pascagoula, Mississippi. It is the focus of a battery of tests and it raises several red flags when it comes to seafood safety, how much oil is still in the gulf and where is it?


BON SECOUR, Alabama - A deck full of royal red shrimp and oil is the last thing anyone wanted to see docked in Bon Secour.
"My first reaction was its going to kill the sell of seafood because all people hear is shrimp boat out of Bon Secour caught some shrimp with oil on em." Billy Parks owns Billy's Seafood in Bon Secour. He says there is a part of the story no one knows.

"The boat did catch shrimp with oil on 'em but before that he caught a lot of shrimp, him and about 150 other boats, inshore and they was all clean."
The royal reds were caught in 1300 feet of water about 40 miles north of the Deepwater Horizon site in waters reopened last week by NOAA.

NOAA officials and scientist are taking this catch very seriously. They are doing several things right now. They are testing the oil to see if it indeed came from the Deepwater Horizon. They are testing the shrimp to see if and how they were affected by the oil and they've sent a vessel back out to the site to see if they can see any oil on the surface and they are not ruling out shutting down those waters again.

"Everybody knows including our state and federal agencies that the oil is not gone." Casi Callaway with Mobile Baykeeper was not surprised to hear about the oily shrimp.

"We need solid science, good testing of the sediment, the water, the water column not just visible oil sheen. That's the first part but the second part is, if we are not careful, if we reopen and try to sell seafood and its found to be contaminated we can lose the country's trust only one time."

Billy Parks agrees, "We're getting plenty of good seafood. It's just sells are way down." The only way to make sure they get it right, is to make sure the oil is gone. "It's gotta be somewhere. There's no way they could got it all up," says Parks.

The "Our Mother" shrimp boat is one of only three boats in Mobile and Baldwin counties that are rigged to fish for the deep water royal reds.
While there have been reports in Mississippi and Louisiana of shrimpers bringing up tar balls in their nets, this is the first report involving an Alabama boat.


Video at link-
http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/arti ... 10_6-06-pm

[Nordic]

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/submari ... f-12302919

"Yeah. It looks like everything's dead."

"The oil is everywhere."

[Gouda]

Crossposted to Fuck Obama:

Armed services are urged to stock kitchens with Gulf seafood

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who doubles as President Barack Obama's point man on Gulf Coast oil spill recovery, is pressing America's armed services to consume as much Gulf seafood as possible.
...

In a meeting Monday with Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, Mabus reaffirmed his commitment to using the tools at his disposal to help the Gulf seafood industry recover from the damage the BP oil spill has done in reality and perception. The board is gearing up for a large-scale national marketing campaign, with $30 million in BP money and millions more in federal dollars, to reassure restaurants and markets across the country that Gulf seafood is safe.

"He expressed what we wanted to hear: He is in favor of the federal government buying seafood from the Gulf," said Smith, who said he would like to see Gulf seafood as the choice throughout the public domain, "whether it's the military or prison systems or school systems."
...

BP is giving the Louisiana marketing board $30 million to spend over the next three years to promote Gulf seafood, and Smith said a request for proposals from agencies that would craft the marketing campaign will be going out shortly.
...

Wal-mart, for example, plans to buy all of its wild-caught fresh and frozen fish from MSC-certified fisheries beginning next year.
...

The still unanswerable question is the long-term effect of the oil spilled and the dispersants used to break it up, effects that might not show up for years. "We don't know that answer and I don't think there's a scientist that could give you a definitive answer," Smith said.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... to_st.html

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Rig worker says she can't testify at spill hearing

The Associated Press

HOUSTON - A technician who was aboard the oil rig that exploded April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico says she is too traumatized to testify before a panel investigating the blast and subsequent spill.

Cathleena Willis was working for Sperry Sun the night of the blast that killed 11 people and caused more than 200 million gallons of oil to spew from a deep-sea well. BP PLC was the majority owner of the well and leased the rig from Transocean.

Willis filed a request Monday in federal court in Houston asking that the subpoena requiring her to testify to be quashed. Willis says she suffered physical and emotional trauma and watched friends and co-workers die.

Willis had been scheduled to testify during Thursday's hearings into the disaster, though she did not take the stand. A court has not ruled on her request.