Have you ever watched birds as they take care of their young? Birds are fiercely protective. Many times I've watched in amazement as mockingbird chases off a hawk and as a grackle chases off an osprey.
The Louisiana brown pelicans can do little as the oil comes ashore in Breton Island and covers their eggs and hatchlings with a thick coating of oil.
The marshes not only are nurseries for birds but for fish and shrimp as well. The marine food chain starts in these marshes. More needs to be done. No more drill baby drill until we learn how to deal with the spill baby spill.
We need tighter and more effective government regulation over these rigs. We need to make sure that the oil companies have plans that entail more than just blaming each other for what goes wrong.
In Biloxi & D'Iberville Mississippi, in Bayou LaBatre Alabama, and in places in Louisiana, there are thousands who work in seafood plants who are now out of jobs.
There is a Deepwater Horizon Response facebook page. Today, about halfway down the page, there was an update on where people who have lost their jobs can go to get help. The link goes directly to the USDA website on food stamps. There are no special programs set-up to help those directly affected by the oil-spill. There are oil spill clean-up jobs available but not enough.
On the Coast, we know that the litigation will probably drag on for decades like it did after the Exxon Valdez. Haliburton, BP, and Transocean pointed fingers at one another without anyone taking the blame. BP keeps saying it is going to pay for the clean-up and yet the talking heads keep saying, "We're not to blame".
Right now, the oil spill is impacting those who work in the seafood industry. Soon, as the oil creeps ever closer to Gulf Coast shores, the tourist industry will start seeing a major impact.
Yesterday morning when I stepped out to get the newspaper, the air was heavy with scent of oil. I live 12 miles inland!! The oil slick is inching ever closer to my beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast:
High winds and rough seas caused the protective booms to break.
And there are concerns that the oil slick may become caught up the Gulf Loop and actually have more of an impact along the eastern shore of Florida, impacting from Miami to Jacksonville.
Where ever it hits, it will an ecological disaster.
