A Photo Essay From the Summer of Discontent
July 10th, 2010Click Images to Enlarge
Looking at the sunset over Mobile Bay from the north side of the Fort Morgan peninsula, knowing that the Gulf of Mexico and the bay nearby are full of crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon, one can’t help but wonder if this is the final sunset in the summer of discontent for a way of life on the Gulf coast. Nature will heal itself over eons of time. The question is: Can wildlife and human communities dependent on this nature now survive the BP oil gusher of 2010? (It’s hard to see in this small photo on the Web, but there is a mullet jumping in this picture, on his left side, of course. Click to zoom in and see if you can spot it : )
This is just one oil glob in a million on the beach by the Morgantown community on Fort Morgan Road. Looked at from this closeup perspective, it almost looks edible, like the thick chocolate syrup you might pour on a French chocolate mousse.
This is the view at the end road on Mobile Street in the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, the view a BP contractor doesn’t want you to see.
Watchdogging BP: Oil Giant Restricts Press Access to Alabama Beach
After we drove down to the end of Mobile Street past the Alabama state trooper, while we waited on a park ranger to come talk to us about the policy on press access to the beach, I snapped this shot of the Alabama state butterfly, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. It just goes to show you that there is so much beauty in the world, even in the middle of the chaos of a crew of convicts struggling to excavate a river of oil on a public beach.
Just another glob of oil, surrounded by dark brown splotches where workers have picked up some oil. The problem is, as the Transocean-BP oil gusher continues to dump a million gallons a day into the Gulf, the emulsified crude will just keep on coming in, depending on the wind and the tide.
A lone great blue heron fishing in Mobile Bay, perhaps a refugee from the Gulf forced to move inland to find clean water and food.
Where Oh Where Have All the Wildlife Gone?
This is what the beach looked like in Morgantown, a residential community on the Fort Morgan peninsula, on July 7, 2010. (Photo by John Taylor)
A family swimming in oil-tainted water. Not sure what they were thinking. This is not healthy.
On the way home from the beach, I stopped off at Weeks Bay to check on the wildlife and the conditions of the water there. Quite a large flock of seagulls were feasting on dead minnows in the bay, along with this lone brown pelican.
Where Oh Where Have All the Wildlife Gone?
The stink of dead fish hovers in the air over Weeks Bay in Baldwin County, Alabama, as thousands of dead minnows wash up here.
A brown pelican taking off from a piling pole in Weeks Bay. One can only hope he makes it home to Gaillard Island OK at the end of the day, and does not get sick from the dead fish he consumed in the murky water lightly tainted by oil.
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments
Tags: A Photo Essay From the Summer of Discontent, Alabama, Baldwin County, Fort Morgan, Weeks Bay
July 10th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Love your photos.
Those pictures of people swimming in contaminated water really bother me. I saw some on another site with parents letting kids play with the oil. What the hell. Are they trying to play willing guinea pig, trying to earn the right to say “it didn’t cause us any harm”? I don’t know, but it’s weird.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Thanks.
Not sure what they were thinking, or if they were thinking, at all…