Sea creatures flee oil spill, gather near shore

By JAY REEVES, JOHN FLESHER and TAMARA LUSH, Associated Press Writers
June 17, 2010
AP via Yahoo News

GULF SHORES, Ala. – Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water off Florida beaches, like forest animals fleeing a fire. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife seem to be fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast in a trend that some researchers see as a potentially troubling sign.

The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily be devoured by predators.

"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

The nearly two-month-old spill has created an environmental catastrophe unparalleled in U.S. history as tens of millions of gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Scientists are seeing some unusual things as they try to understand the effects on thousands of species of marine life.

Day by day, scientists in boats tally up dead birds, sea turtles and other animals, but the toll is surprisingly small given the size of the disaster. The latest figures show that 783 birds, 353 turtles and 41 mammals have died — numbers that pale in comparison to what happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989, when 250,000 birds and 2,800 otters are believed to have died.

Researchers say there are several reasons for the relatively small death toll: The vast nature of the spill means scientists are able to locate only a small fraction of the dead animals. Many will never be found after sinking to the bottom of the sea or being scavenged by other marine life. And large numbers of birds are meeting their deaths deep in the Louisiana marshes where they seek refuge from the onslaught of oil.

"That is their understanding of how to protect themselves," said Doug Zimmer, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

For nearly four hours Monday, a three-person crew with Greenpeace cruised past delicate islands and mangrove-dotted inlets in Barataria Bay off southern Louisiana. They saw dolphins by the dozen frolicking in the oily sheen and oil-tinged pelicans feeding their young. But they spotted no dead animals.

"I think part of the reason why we're not seeing more yet is that the impacts of this crisis are really just beginning," Greenpeace marine biologist John Hocevar said.

The counting of dead wildlife in the Gulf is more than an academic exercise: The deaths will help determine how much BP pays in damages.

As for the fish, researchers are still trying to determine where exactly they are migrating to understand the full scope of the disaster, and no scientific consensus has emerged about the trend.

Mark Robson, director of the Division of Marine Fisheries Management with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said his agency has yet to find any scientific evidence that fish are being adversely affected off his state's waters. He noted that it is common for fish to flee major changes in their environment, however.

In some areas along the coast, researchers believe fish are swimming closer to shore because the water is cleaner and more abundant in oxygen. Farther out in the Gulf, researchers say, the spill is not only tainting the water with oil but also depleting oxygen levels.

A similar scenario occurs during "dead zone" periods — the time during summer months when oxygen becomes so depleted that fish race toward shore in large numbers. Sometimes, so many fish gather close to the shoreline off Mobile that locals rush to the beach with tubs and nets to reap the harvest.

But this latest shore migration could prove deadly.

First, more oil could eventually wash ashore and overwhelm the fish. They could also become trapped between the slick and the beach, leading to increased competition for oxygen in the water and causing them to die as they run out of air.

"Their ability to avoid it may be limited in the long term, especially if in near-shore refuges they're crowding in close to shore, and oil continues to come in. At some point they'll get trapped," said Crowder, expert in marine ecology and fisheries. "It could lead to die-offs."

The fish could also fall victim to predators such as sharks and seabirds. Already there have been increased shark sightings in shallow waters along the Gulf Coast.

The migration of fish away from the oil spill can be good news for some coastal residents.

Tom Sabo has been fishing off Panama City, Fla., for years, and he's never seen the fishing better or the water any clearer than it was last weekend 16 to 20 miles off the coast. His fishing spot was far enough east that it wasn't affected by the pollution or federal restrictions, and it's possible that his huge catch of red snapper, grouper, king mackerel and amberjack was a result of fish fleeing the spill.

In Alabama, locals are seeing large schools hanging around piers where fishing has been banned, leading them to believe the fish feel safer now that they are not being disturbed by fishermen.

"We pretty much just got tired of catching fish," Sabo said. "It was just inordinately easy, and these were strong fish, nothing that was affected by oil. It's not just me. I had to wait at the cleaning table to clean fish."

___

Lush contributed from Barataria Bay, La., Flesher from Traverse City, Mich.

Obama: BP agrees to $20B fund; chairman apologizes

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer
June 16, 2010
AP via Yahoo News

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and BP reached agreement Wednesday on a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the giant British company's chairman apologized to America for the worst environmental accident in the nation's history.

BP is suspending its dividends to shareholders to help pay for the costs, said chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.

Obama announced the agreement after a four-hour meeting with BP officials. He also said the company had agreed to set up a separate $100 million fund to compensate oil rig workers laid off as a result of his six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

"The structure we are establishing today is an important step toward making the people of the Gulf Coast whole again, but it will not turn things around overnight," Obama said. He said the vulnerable fishermen, restaurant workers and other people of the Gulf "are uppermost in the minds of all concerned. That's who we're doing this work for."

Likewise, Svanberg, speaking for a company that has been assailed from every corner for the past two months, said, "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are — are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case in BP. We care about the small people."

The claims system sets up a formal process to be run by a specialist with a proven record. Instead of vague promises by BP, there will be a White House-blessed structure with substantial money and the pledge that more will be provided if needed. The news was applauded in the Gulf — a rare positive development in a terrible two-month period since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and unleashed a flood of oil that has yet to be stemmed.

Company officials talked separately outside the White House.

Svanberg announced the dividend suspension and expressed sorrow for victims of the spill. "This tragic accident ... should have never happened," he said, and he also used the occasion to "apologize to the American people."

Obama said the independent fund will be directed by lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw payments to families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. There will be a three-member panel to adjudicate claims that are turned down.

"This is about accountability. At the end of the day, that's what every American wants and expects," Obama said.

BP would pay $5 billion a year over the next four years to set up the $20 billion fund.

"The people of the Gulf have my commitment that BP will meet its obligations to them," Obama said. "This $20 billion amount will provide substantial assurance that the claims people and businesses have will be honored."

He emphasized that the $20 billion was "not a cap" and that BP would pay more if necessary.

The eight-week disaster in the Gulf, with oil still pouring from the broken well, is jeopardizing the environment as well as the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people across the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

BP has taken the brunt of criticism about the oil spill because it was the operator of the Deepwater Horizon rig that sunk. It also is a majority owner of the undersea well that has been spewing oil since the explosion, which killed 11 workers.

But when the day of reckoning finally comes, BP may not be the only one having to pay up. That's because Swiss-based Transocean Ltd. owned a majority interest in the rig. Anadarko Petroleum, based in The Woodlands, Texas, has a 25 percent non-operating interest in the well.

Word of the fund was well received on the Gulf Coast. Applause broke out during a community meeting in Orange Beach, Ala., when Mayor Tony Kennon briefed participants on the White House meeting.

"We asked for that two weeks ago and they laughed at us," Kennon said. "Thank you, President Obama, for taking a bunch of rednecks' suggestion and making it happen." Obama visited Orange Beach on Monday.

In Washington, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also sought to take some credit. "While this fund will in no way limit BP's liability, it is a good first step toward compensating victims," he said. Reid and other Senate Democrats proposed a $20 billion BP-financed fund earlier in the week.

Feinberg, the official who will direct the effort, is currently known as Obama's "pay czar," setting salary limits for companies getting the most aid from a $700 billion government bailout fund. He also ran the $7 billion government compensation program after the 2001 terrorist attacks. It was a job that lasted nearly three years as he decided how much families should get, largely based on how much income victims would have earned in a lifetime.

As pay czar, Feinberg has capped cash salaries at $500,000 this year for the vast majority of the top executives at the five major companies that received bailout funding: American International Group, GMAC Financial Services, Chrysler Financial, Chrysler and General Motors.

The president met at midday with the top BP leaders to press the London-based oil giant to pay giant claims.

Wednesday's White House meeting came the morning after Obama vowed in a TV address that "we will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused."

For the president, Wednesday's meeting with a few company officials behind closed doors was a bookend to his attempt to reach millions at once. Using a delivery in which even the harshest words were uttered in subdued tones, Obama did not offer much in the way of new ideas or details in his Tuesday night speech. He recapped the government's efforts, insisted once again that BP would be held to account and tried to tap the resilience of a nation in promising that "something better awaits."

Obama's forceful tone about BP's behavior shows how far matters have deteriorated. The White House once described BP as an essential partner in plugging the crude oil spewing from the broken well beneath nearly a mile of water. Now Obama says BP has threatened to destroy a coastal way of life.

An Associated Press-GfK poll released Tuesday showed 52 percent now disapprove of Obama's handling of the oil spill, up significantly from last month and about the same as President George W. Bush's rating after Hurricane Katrina. Most people — 56 percent — think the government's actions in response to the oil disaster really haven't had any impact on the situation.

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Associated Press writer Harry Weber in Houston, Jay Reeves in Orange Beach, Ala., and Kenneth Thomas, Martin Crutsinger, Darlene Superville, Daniel Wagner and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this story.

Long road to oil cleanup looms over Gulf Coast

By JAY REEVES and RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writers
June 7, 2010
AP via Yahoo News

GULF SHORES, Ala. – A geyser of oil spewing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is slowly tapering off with the help of a wellhead cap, but there's no containing much of the crude that's already escaped, a reality becoming increasingly evident at the region's beaches and marshes.

The battle to contain the oil is likely to stretch into the fall, the government's point man on the spill warned. The cap will trap only so much of the oil, and relief wells being drilled won't be completed until August. Meanwhile, oil will continue to shoot out.

To Kelcey Forrestier, a 23-year-old biology graduate visiting Okaloosa Island, Fla., it was already clear Sunday that the spill and its damage will last long into the future.

"Oil just doesn't go away. Oil doesn't disappear," said Forrestier, of New Orleans. "It has to go somewhere and it's going to come to the Gulf beaches."

Lifeguards found a "very minor" set of fingernail-size tar balls over the weekend on the western edge of the island about 35 miles east of Pensacola, marking the easternmost point oil has been discovered ashore.

Officials reported Sunday afternoon that a sheen of oil was spotted about 150 miles west of Tampa, though they did not expect the slick to reach the western Florida peninsula in the near future.

Officials put out a report late Sunday that dead, oiled birds had been found in Texas but retracted it Monday morning. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Zach Zubricki said authorities were still trying to determine the cause of the error.

BP said Monday that the cost of the response has reached about $1.25 billion. The company said the figure does not include $360 million for a project to build six sand berms meant to protect Louisiana's wetlands from spreading oil.

The prospect that the crisis could stretch beyond summer devastated residents along the Gulf, who are seeing more and thicker globs of oil appear all along the coast.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., Jerry Chessey went for a walk on the beach Monday, stopping on a sandy spot. He was surrounded by clumps of brown seaweed full of rust-colored oil. At his feet, a small yellow cup was coated with black crude, which apparently washed ashore overnight from deeper water.

"It's disappointing," said Chessey, who drove to Gulf Shores with his wife from their home in Cincinnati. "We walked on the beach last night and didn't see any oil. But we walked up to the condo, and it was all over our feet."

In Florida, tar balls continued to roll onto Pensacola Beach and left a distinct line in the sand from the high-rise condos above as the sun rose Monday morning.

Beach walkers had to stay between the line of dime and quarter-sized tar balls and the retreating surf or risk getting the gummy, rust-staining, gunk stuck to their feet.

Jody Haas, a tourist from Aurora, Ill., was among the few walking the beach early Monday after a crowded weekend here.

Haas, who has visited this beach before, says it is not the same now.

"It was pristine, gorgeous, white sand," she said. "This spot is light compared to some of the other spots farther down and (the tar) is just everywhere here. It's just devastating, awful."

Environmental and consumer advocate Erin Brockovich planned to visit southern Louisiana on Monday to speak to people who say they've been sickened by dispersants used to break up the oil spill.

At Pensacola Beach on Sunday, the turquoise waves also were flecked with floating balls of tar. Buck Langston, who has been coming to the beach to collect shells for 38 years, watched as his family used improvised chopsticks to collect the tar in plastic containers.

"Yesterday it wasn't like this, this heavy," Langston, of Baton Rouge, La., said Sunday. "I don't know why cleanup crews aren't out here."

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, overseeing the government's response to the spill, has expressed similar frustration, ordering cleanup crews to the Alabama coastline after surveying the scene from the air. But he acknowledged the relative futility of their efforts.

"It's so widespread, and it's intermittent," he told The Associated Press on Saturday. "That's what's so challenging about this. Everyone wants certainty. With an oil spill like this, there isn't any."

Since it was placed over the busted well on Thursday, the cap has been siphoning an increasing amount of oil. On Saturday, it funneled about 441,000 gallons to a tanker on the surface, up from about 250,000 gallons it captured Friday.

But it's not clear how much is still escaping from the well, which federal authorities have estimated was leaking between 500,000 gallons and 1 million gallons a day. Since the spill began nearly seven weeks ago, roughly 23 million to 50 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf.

The inverted funnel-like cap is being closely watched for whether it can make a serious dent in the flow of new oil. Allen reserved judgment, saying he didn't want to risk offering false encouragement.

"This will be well into the fall," he said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "This is a siege across the entire Gulf. This spill is holding everybody hostage, not only economically but physically. And it has to be attacked on all fronts."

BP cuts pipe, plans to lower cap over Gulf spill

By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writers
Via Yahoo News

METAIRIE, La. – BP sliced off a pipe with giant shears Thursday in the latest bid to curtail the worst spill in U.S. history, but the cut was jagged and placing a cap over the gusher will now be more challenging.

BP turned to the shears after a diamond-tipped saw became stuck in the pipe halfway through the job, yet another frustrating delay in the six-week-old Gulf of Mexico spill.

The cap will be lowered and sealed over the next couple of hours, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the disaster. It won't be known how much oil BP can siphon to a tanker on the surface until the cap is fitted, but the irregular cut means it won't fit as snugly as officials hoped.

"We'll have to see when we get the containment cap on it just how effective it is," Allen said. "It will be a test and adapt phase as we move ahead, but it's a significant step forward."

Even if it works, BP engineers expect oil to continue leaking into the ocean.

The next chance to stop the flow won't come until two relief wells meant to plug the reservoir for good are finished in August.

This latest attempt to control the spill, the so-called cut-and-cap method, is considered risky because slicing away a section of the 20-inch-wide riser removed a kink in the pipe, and could temporarily increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent.

Live video footage showed oil spewing uninterrupted out of the top of the blowout preventer, but Allen said it was unclear whether the flow had increased.

"I don't think we'll know until the containment cap is seated on there," he said. "We'll have to wait and see."

President Barack Obama will return to the Louisiana coast Friday to assess the latest efforts, his third trip to the region since the April 20 disaster. It's also his second visit in a week.

BP's top executive acknowledged Thursday the global oil giant was unprepared to fight a catastrophic deepwater oil spill. Chief executive Tony Hayward told The Financial Times it was "an entirely fair criticism" to say the company had not been fully prepared for a deepwater oil leak. Hayward called it "low-probability, high-impact" accident.

"What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool-kit," Hayward said in an interview published in Thursday's edition of the London-based newspaper.

Oil drifted six miles from the Florida Panhandle's popular sugar-white beaches, and crews on the mainland were doing everything possible to limit the catastrophe.

The Coast Guard's Allen directed BP to pay for five additional sand barrier projects in Louisiana. BP said Thursday the project will cost it about $360 million, on top of about $990 million it had spent on response and clean up, grants to four Gulf coast states and claims from people and companies hurt by the spill.

Mark Johnecheck, a 68-year-old retired Navy captain from Pensacola, sat on a black folding chair as rough surf crashed ashore at Pensacola Beach and children splashed in the water. Johnecheck has lived in the Pensacola area since the 1960s, but doesn't come to the beach very often.

"The reason I'm here now is because I'm afraid it's going to be gone," he said. "I'm really afraid that the next time I come out here it's not going to look like this."

He said the arrival of the oil seems foregone: "I don't know what else they can do," he said. "It just makes you feel helpless."

His wife walks up and becomes emotional thinking about the oil. "It's like grieving somebody on their dying bed," said Marjorie Johnecheck, 62.

Next to her chair is a small white pail full of sugary Panhandle sand. She will take it home and put it in a decorative jar.

"I'm taking it home before it gets black," she said.

Forecasters said the oil would probably wash up by Friday, threatening a delicate network of islands, bays and beaches that are a haven for wildlife and a major tourist destination dubbed the Redneck Riviera.

Officials said the slick sighted offshore consisted in part of "tar mats" about 500 feet by 2,000 feet in size.

County officials set up the booms to block oil from reaching inland waterways but planned to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to defend against the action of the waves and because they are easier to clean up.

Anne Wilson, a 62-year-old retired teachers aide who has lived in Pensacola Beach for the last year and a half, felt helpless.

"There's nothing more you can do," said Wilson, who lived in Valdez, Alaska, near the Exxon spill in 1989. "It's up to Mother Nature to take care of things. Humans can only do so much."

Florida's beaches play a crucial role in the state's tourism industry. At least 60 percent of vacation spending in the state during 2008 was in beachfront cities. Worried that reports of oil would scare tourists away, state officials are promoting interactive Web maps and Twitter feeds to show travelers — particularly those from overseas — how large the state is and how distant their destinations may be from the spill.

The effect on wildlife has grown, too.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported 522 dead birds — at least 38 of them oiled — along the Gulf coast states, and more than 80 oiled birds have been rescued. It's not clear exactly how many of the deaths can be attributed to the spill.

Dead birds and animals found during spills are kept as evidence in locked freezers until investigations and damage assessments are complete, according to Teri Frady, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"This includes strict chain-of-custody procedures and long-term locked storage until the investigative and damage assessment phases of the spill are complete," she wrote in an e-mail.

___

Associated Press writers Adam Geller and Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, Melissa Nelson and Matt Sedensky in Pensacola and Travis Reed in Miami also contributed to this report.

Oil nears Fla. beaches as BP tries risky cap move

By GREG BLUESTEIN and BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writers

June 2, 2010

Via Yahoo News

PORT FOURCHON, La. – The BP oil slick drifted close to the Florida Panhandle's white sand beaches for the first time as submersible robots a mile below the Gulf of Mexico made the latest risky attempt to control the seafloor gusher.

Even if it works, the current mission to cut a major pipe and cap it would only reduce the flow, not stop it. If it fails, it could make the largest oil spill in U.S. history even worse. The best hope for sealing the leak, until a permanent fix is possible in August, failed Saturday, when engineers were unable to plug it with heavy mud in a maneuver called a top kill.

Investors ran from BP's stock for a second day Wednesday, reacting to the top kill failure and the Justice Department's announcement that it was looking at criminal and civil probes into the spill, although the department did not name specific targets for prosecution.

Shares in British-based BP PLC were down 3 percent Wednesday morning in London trading after a 13 percent fall the day before. BP has lost $75 billion in market value since the spill started with an April 20 oil rig explosion and analysts expect damage claims to total billions more.

In Florida, officials confirmed an oil sheen Tuesday about nine miles from Pensacola beach, where the summer tourism season was just getting started.

Winds were forecast to blow from the south and west, pushing the slick closer to western Panhandle beaches.

Emergency crews began scouring the beaches for oil and shoring up miles of boom. County officials will use it to block oil from reaching inland waterways but plan to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to protect and easier to clean up.

"It's inevitable that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief of neighborhood and community services for Escambia County.

The oil has been spreading in the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded six weeks ago, killing 11 workers and eventually sinking. The rig was being operated for BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf.

Crude has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and it has polluted some 125 miles of Louisiana coastline.

More federal fishing waters were closed, too, another setback for one of the region's most important industries. More than one-third of federal waters were off-limits for fishing, along with hundreds of square miles of state waters.

Fisherman Hong Le, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam, had rebuilt his home and business after Hurricane Katrina wiped him out. Now he's facing a similar situation.

"I'm going to be bankrupt very soon," Le, 53, said as he attended a meeting for fishermen hoping for help. "Everything is financed, how can I pay? No fishing, no welding. I weld on commercial fishing boats and they aren't going out now, so nothing breaks."

Le, like other of the fishermen, received $5,000 from BP PLC, but it was quickly gone.

"I call that 'Shut your mouth money,'" said Murray Volk, 46, of Empire, who's been fishing for nearly 30 years. "That won't pay the insurance on my boat and house. They say there'll be more later, but do you think the electric company will wait for that?"

BP may have bigger problems, though.

Attorney General Eric Holder, who visited the Gulf on Tuesday, would not say who might be targeted in the probes into the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response," Holder said in New Orleans.

The federal government also ramped up its response to the spill with President Barack Obama ordering the co-chairmen of an independent commission investigating the spill to thoroughly examine the disaster, "to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor."

The president said that if laws are insufficient, they'll be changed. He said that if government oversight wasn't tough enough, that will change, too.

BP has tried and failed repeatedly to halt the flow of the oil, and the latest attempt like others has never been tried before a mile beneath the ocean. Experts warned it could be even riskier than the others because slicing open the 20-inch riser could unleash more oil if there was a kink in the pipe that restricted some of the flow.

"It is an engineer's nightmare," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences. "They're trying to fit a 21-inch cap over a 20-inch pipe a mile away. That's just horrendously hard to do. It's not like you and I standing on the ground pushing — they're using little robots to do this."

Engineers have put underwater robots and equipment in place this week after a bold attempt to plug the well by force-feeding it heavy mud and cement — called a "top kill" — was aborted over the weekend. Crews pumped thousands of gallons of the mud into the well but were unable to overcome the pressure of the oil.

The company said if the small dome is successful it could capture and siphon a majority of the gushing oil to the surface. But the cut and cap will not halt the oil flow, just capture some of it and funnel it to vessels waiting at the surface.

BP's best chance to permanently plug the leak rests with a pair of relief wells but those won't likely be completed until August.

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Bluestein reported from Covington, La. Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Pete Yost from Washington, Curt Anderson from Miami, Brian Skoloff from Port Fourchon, Mary Foster in Boothville, and Michael Kunzelman also contributed to this report.

“It’s BP’s Oil”

Running the corporate blockade at Louisiana's crude-covered beaches.

— By Mac McClelland
Mon May. 24, 2010 12:14 AM PDT
http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/oil-spill-bp-grand-isle-beach

Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, even after all the warnings, looks worse than I imagined. Pools of oil black and deep stretch down the beach; when cleanup workers drag their rakes along an already-cleaned patch of sand, more auburn crude oozes up. Beneath the surface lie slimy washed-up globules that, one worker says, are "so big you could park a car on them."

It's Saturday, May 22nd, a month into the BP spill, and I've been trying to get to Elmer's Island for the past two days. I've been stymied at every turn by Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies brought in to supplement the local police force of Grand Isle, a 300-year-old settlement here at the very southern tip of Louisiana. Just seven miles long and so narrow in some spots that you can see from the Gulf side to the inland side, Grand Isle is all new clapboard and vinyl-sided bungalows since Katrina, but still scrappy—population 1,500, octuple that in tourist season. It's also home to the only route to Elmer's, a barrier island to the west. I arrived on Thursday with my former University of New Orleans lit prof, John Hazlett; a tandem kayak is strapped to his Toyota Tacoma. At the turn to Elmer's Island Road, a deputy flags us down. Can't go to Elmer's; he's just "doing what they told me to do." We continue on to Grand Isle beach, where toddlers splash in the surf. Only after I've stepped in a blob of crude do I realize that the sheen on the waves and the blackness covering a little blue heron from the neck down is oil.

The next day, cops drive up and down Grand Isle beach explicitly telling tourists it is still open, just stay out of the water. There are pools of oil on the beach; dolphins crest just offshore. A fifty-something couple, Southern Louisianians, tell me this kind of thing happened all the time when they were kids; they swam in rubber suits when it got bad, and it was no big deal. They just hope this doesn't mean we'll stop drilling.

The blockade to Elmer's is now four cop cars strong. As we pull up, deputies start bawling us out; all media need to go to the Grand Isle community center, where a "BP Information Center" sign now hangs out front.

Inside, a couple of Times-Picayune reporters circle BP representative Barbara Martin, who tells them that if they want passage to Elmer they have to get it from another BP flack, Irvin Lipp; Grand Isle beach is closed too, she adds. When we inform the Times-Pic reporters otherwise, she asks Dr. Hazlett if he's a reporter; he says, "No." She says, "Good." She doesn't ask me. We tell her that deputies were just yelling at us, and she seems truly upset. For one, she's married to a Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputy. For another, "We don't need more of a black eye than we already have."

"But it wasn't BP that was yelling at us, it was the sheriff's office," we say.

"Yeah, I know, but we have…a very strong relationship."

"What do you mean? You have a lot of sway over the sheriff's office?"

"Oh yeah."

"How much?"

"A lot."

When I tell Barbara I am a reporter, she stalks off and says she's not talking to me, then comes back and hugs me and says she was just playing. I tell her I don't understand why I can't see Elmer's Island unless I'm escorted by BP. She tells me BP's in charge because "it's BP's oil."

"But it's not BP's land."

"But BP's liable if anything happens."

"So you're saying it's a safety precaution."

"Yeah! You don't want that oil gettin' into your pores."

"But there are tourists and residents walking around in it across the street."

"The mayor decides which beaches are closed." So I call the Grand Isle police requesting a press liason, only to get routed to voicemail for "Melanie" with BP. I call the police back and ask why they gave me a number for BP; they blame the fire chief.

I reach the fire chief. "Why did the police give me a number for BP?" I ask.

"That's the number they gave us."

"Who?"

"BP."

When I tell Chief Aubrey Chaisson that I would like to get a comment on Barbara's intimations—and my experience so far—that BP is running the show, he says he'll meet me in a parking lot. He pulls in, rolls down the window of his maroon Crown Victoria, and tells me that I can't trust the government or big corporations. When everyone saw the oil coming in as clear as day several days before that, BP insisted it was red tide—algae. Chaisson says he's half-Indian and grew up here and just wants to protect the land. When I tell him BP says the inland side of the island is still clean, he spits, "They're fucking liars. There's oil over there. It's already all up through the pass." The spill workers staying at my motel later tell me they've been specifically instructed by BP not to talk to any media, but they're pissed because BP tried to tell them that the crude they were swimming around in to move an oil containment boom was red tide, dishwashing-liquid runoff, or mud.

The next morning at breakfast, the word at Sarah's Restaurant is that the island will have to be shut down; the smell of oil was so strong last night one lady had to shut all her windows and turn on her AC; if her asthma keeps up like this, she'll need to go on her breathing machine tonight.

I've corralled Irvin Lipp, who drives me and a few wire photographers out to Elmer's. (He tells me ruefully that he has history with Mother Jones, having once been a flack for Dupont.) The shoreline is packed with men in hats and gumboots and bright blue or white shirts. Nearly all are African-American, all hired from around New Orleans. They tell me they've been standing in these exact same spots for three days. It's breathtakingly hot. They rake the oil and sand into big piles; other workers collect the piles into big plastic bags, and still other workers take them to a plant where the sand is separated out and sent to a hazardous-waste dump and the oil goes on for processing. Then the tide comes in with more oil and everybody starts all over again. Ten dollars an hour. Twelve hours a day. When I joke with one worker that he should pocket the solid gobs of oil he's digging up to show me how far beneath the sand they go, he stops dead and asks me if BP's still trying to use the oil they all collect. "Aw, I knew it!" he says. Another leans on his rake to ask me, "Have they at least shut the oil off yet?" He randomly picks three spots in a three-foot-wide expanse of sand that he's already raked clean and drops his rake in an inch deeper to show me how the oil bubbles up from underneath. He can't count how many times he's raked this same spot in the 33 hours he's worked it since Thursday, but one thing he's sure of, he says, is that he'll be standing right here tomorrow and the next day, too.

Mac McClelland is Mother Jones' human rights reporter, writer of The Rights Stuff, and the author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story From Burma's Never-Ending War. Read more of her stories and follow her on Twitter.