Cap Testing Thursday: July 15 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Oilcast

Today we configured NOAA's new interactive spill map for wind and wave projections over the next 72 hours (as above). It looks like the moderately light southerly breezes we saw on the beach yesterday will continue. By late yesterday afternoon, we made the wind out to be almost a two-club wind at times, or as brisk as 15 mph along unprotected shores. Small white caps dotted Pensacola Bay.

A southerly breeze generally means southerly currents near to shore. These days, with large sheets of oil hanging around offshore, that almost inevitably means at least some small tarballs and fresh oil mousse sloshing around in the surf. If the past is prologue, the farther west on Santa Rose Island one goes the more numerous and larger the tarballs even on days when the weather seems great.

2. Cap Test Delayed, Resumes, Delayed, Resumes, etc. etc. etc.

After a long day of on-again, off-again promises to begin the pressure testing on the new cap stack, late last night BP finally started the tests -- and discovered " a leak on a line on the choke valve of the new cap." Little wonder Energy Secretary Chu and his team thought it necessary to make BP re-check everything yesterday.

We shouldn't be surprised that BP's engineers missed something. For three months, BP has been acting as if they're filming "The Keystone Kops Drill for Oil." Even when the corporation stubbornly sticks to sharing only what little good news there is, and suppressing all of the bad, it screws up.

Yesterday, however, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen were more explicit about the risks BP is running than any official involved, government or otherwise, has been before. As the New York Times reported today:

Mr. Gibbs described the review as “a series of steps” that were being taken “in order to ensure that what we’re doing is being done out of an abundance of caution to do no harm.”

Among the concerns was that if the well was damaged during the test, oil and gas might leak from the seafloor around the well rather than up through the well bore as it is now.
* * *
Admiral Allen said the government had asked BP for more information on the structural strength of the well. And in allowing the test to proceed, the government stipulated that pressure be allowed to build up in intervals, with acoustic tests to gauge the well’s condition every six hours. That would most likely lengthen the duration of the test, which had been expected to last from 6 to 48 hours.

Earlier this morning, BP repaired the leaking hose. Now, says the New York Times in a late update, the "test can proceed." Remember that admonition of our dear old father. He wasn't a pessimist, just a clear-eyed realist.

3. Booms on the Water.

Even in a moderately light breeze, as mentioned above, the oil booms in unprotected waters don't fare well. Even low waves wash over them, twist them, and sometimes dislodge them altogether. Yesterday, the boom on the mainland at the Project Greenshores site at the north of the 3-mile bridge was close to breaking up in less than 2 feet seas (see photo, left).

It's disheartening to imagine what a stiff wind will do to them.

On the other hand, in protected waters like the entrance to Little Sabine Bay, the boom was doing fairly well yesterday:

4. The Story of O.

Yes, there are "oil impact notices" stuck here and there at Pensacola Beach warning visitors of the possible presence of "oil products." But what about the electronic sign? Nary a word that so much as starts with the letter "O."

Yesterday the sign read, "Swim with extra caution." Doesn't that sound almost like an invitation to swim rather than a health warning?

5. New Tourist Game: Tarballs and Mousse.

Not surprisingly, many land-lubbing tourists don't know a tarball from a mousse patty. Heck, most of us who've frequented the beach for years didn't know the difference either, until a couple of months ago.

It seems, now, that tourists well enough informed to know we're experiencing an oil emergency may be coming to the beach out of curiosity. Yesterday, we came across a small party beaching it along the road to Ft. Pickens. They were from Missouri, the "show me" state. They had to see for themselves.

Several were wading in the surf, playing at catching tarballs with each ebb and flow of the waves coming ashore. It's the latest tourist recreational activity, like shelling -- only for bits of oil pollution.

We saw Yvonne from St. Louis snatch something small and orange from the surf before it washed back into the Gulf.

"What's this?" she asked a friend.

He shrugged and shook his head. "A shell, maybe?"

"It's oil from the spill," we offered. "See how soft and pliable it is? They call that mousse."

"Really?" she said excitedly. "It doesn't look like oil."

We explained that the hard black things she had been grabbing out of the water are called tarballs. They are bits of oil that have weathered awhile in the air and water. The small orange glop she held in her hands now was unweathered oil. It had traveled from BP's well over a hundred and fifty miles away, probably under water for most of the time.

Yvonne was so excited that she proudly displayed her find to all of her friends. We obligingly took a photo:


We didn't mean to be censorious of our new-found acquaintances, but we couldn't help remarking that it seemed a little, well, inappropriate that she looked so happy about finding oil on the beach.

"You're right," she said after a moment's thought. "Here, take my picture again."

This time she wrinkled her nose and screwed her face into what she supposed would be the locally-accepted expression:


As they were leaving, we noticed that Yvonne took the mousse with her, despite our warning that it is toxic. A souvenir of her beach vacation.

6. Social Notes from Pensacola Beach.

Rick Outzen, publisher of the local weekly Independent News, reported yesterday that he's been getting complaints "from business owners that attended the SRIA cocktail party for the Blue Angels and their wives on Friday, July 9 at the Hilton."

First, the beach lifeguards were there and talked through most of the presentations. Second, the names and titles of the Blues were stated incorrectly. When the Blues wanted to make their presentation to the SRIA, no one could find the board chairman or a board member to accept it.

As one beach business owner and admitted Blues fan told me, "These men deserve our respect and admiration. That party was an embarrassment."

The most shocking lapse, to us, is the absence of anyone from the Santa Rosa Island Authority. SRIA executive car-counter Buck Lee likes to receive more awards than a TV exec at a sitcom convention. Once, he even had the SRIA give himself a Hummer.

7. Journalism Award.

Speaking of awards, Mac McClelland, who was on Pensacola Beach a couple of weeks ago, has won the Hillman Foundation's monthly Sidney Award for outstanding social consciousness in journalism. Her winning entry in Mother Jones magazine concerned BP's oil spill and the devastating effect it has had on the lives of families along the Louisiana coast. ["Depression, Abuse, Suicide: Fishermen's Wives Face Post-Spill Trauma"]

8. NPR Continues to Doze Through Its Oil Coverage.

National Public Radio this morning continued its miserably superficial coverage of the Great Oil-Poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico. At long distance from his sunny, eternally-optimistic desk in Washington D.C., where he's sure not to get his cuffs dirty, NPR'S science guy Richard Harris continues his completely credulous watch of the same robotic camera feeds that everyone else in the world sees. Then he reports what he thinks he saw.

Have time to waste? Give a listen. Then ask NPR, is this the kind of "serious, in-depth reporting" they claimed they would do with Joan Kroc's $200 million?

Oil Presents from BP, Delivered by Hurricane Alex

As the outer-most bands of Hurricane Alex began to churn the surf all along Pensacola Beach this morning, we traveled down the beach a bit, alternating between a movie camera and a still camera.

First we went to "East Park," the county-owned beach just beyond Portofino. There, what we found washing ashore in the churning surf were large and small black tarballs of weathered oil mixed with fresh orange oil mousse in patties as large and thick as a three-pound package of ground hamburger.

Hurricane Alex is hundreds of miles to our west. Just try to imagine what things will look like if a hurricane comes close to or strikes Pensacola Beach.




Later, we traveled to Ft. Pickens Gate Park, the picnic area on the western-most side of Pensacola Beach. The surf there was slightly more vigorous. Thick, heavy streaks of orange mousse over-washed the entire beach, from the surf to forty yards or more inland.

A small regiment of bulldozers was trying to scrape the surface clean. But their heavy tracks left behind evidence that much more oil lies just beneath the thin veneer they'd scraped.

Click on the photo below to see a closeup:
As we were leaving an eleven year old boy "going on twelve," who was visiting with a dozen family members from Oklahoma, proudly showed us his new collection of oil refuse.

"What are you going to do with it?" we asked.

""I'm gonna show it around and keep it," he answered.

"It's a souvenier," his mother said proudly. "We'll split it up so everybody in the family has some."

"It's historic," added the father.

"It also contains carcinogens," we pointed out.

"Really?" the mother gasped. "No one told us that."

Pensacola Pass Before the Booming

We've already mentioned Friday's stroll around Ft. Pickens National Seashore Park. That was when we lucked into a two-hour scoop on word that the Unified Command in the Mobile section had just authorized the booming of Pensacola Pass.

We took a number of other photographs that day which we normally wouldn't bother sharing since we were using a simple little pocket camera and there were on hand a number of far more skilled and much better equipped newspaper and television photographers at the same location. But, as it turns out, they weren't interested in what we stumbled upon, so what the heck.... Let's share.

Here are some more or less selected scenes from our walk-about to the western tip of Santa Rosa Island before the booming. (You can see a detailed view by clicking on each picture.)

At the seawall near Ft. Pickens fishing pier (above), Cheeseburger the chihuahua eagerly introduced himself with tongue and paw. He and his owner, Pensacola painting contractor Ted Dwiggins, were taking the rest of the day off to say goodbye to a healthy Pensacola Bay.

"I finished a job this morning," Dwiggins explained, "and we thought we'd come out here while it dries."

"Got treats?" Cheeseburger asked.

"There are tarballs all along the beach," Dwiggins warned.

He had brought with him a pair of binoculars. Pointing them at the bay he added, "I think there's a large sheet of oil beneath the surface out there. Can't really see it, though."

"Throw ball?" Cheeseburger inquired. "Or stick?"

"We come out here a lot," Dwiggins added. "It's our favorite place. Guess we won't be coming out for months, now. Maybe longer."

"Scratch my back?" Cheeseburger proposed.

We patted our good-byes and walked along the surf line a short distance down the beach before spotting large and small tarballs washing back and forth in the surf (below).

Most were black, crusty things variously the size of a dime to a half dollar. Others were orange-colored, oleaginous blobs of goo.

Some tarballs had been caught up in clumps of seaweed and thin plastic strings that look like cheerleader pom-poms (below).

Those that didn't cling to small bits of seaweed were amorphic in the water. Once deposited on sand above the water's edge, they assumed a somewhat more definite shape, almost like sea anemones, and glinted brightly in the sun as if to counterfeit signs of life.

Our walk along the beach was interrupted by a television crew from Mobile. They were wandering the beach, as we suppose, looking for visually compelling images suitable for a commercial television audience.

The relatively small tarballs at their feet must not have been sufficiently dramatic for the camera lens. But they found Joe Magyarosi.

Joe is a long time, colorful character who lives on Pensacola Beach. He once was a plumber in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as we recall.

Asked by the TV news reporter what he thought about the looming environmental crisis, Joe answered with a question of his own, "Why are we on defense?" he demanded. Quickly, he answered his own question: "We should be playing offense."

Before the startled reporter could respond, Joe dropped to his knees and like a field general in the midst of a battle that's going badly he started to furiously sketch out in the sand a battle plan he had in mind for positioning an entire navy of oil skimmers here, and there, and over yonder. The reporter snapped to attention and the cameraman continued filming (below).

The sun was bright. The sand was dry and powdery. Any finger-digging collapsed easily. The crucial battle lines, circles of imaginary boats, and the sweeping paths of Joe's mythical Skimmer Navy remained elusive to our eye. They probably didn't show up too well on camera, either.

Randomly scattered nearby were used oil booms and plastic garbage bags filled with clumps of thin plastic strips resembling cheerleading pom-poms (below). In the distance, around a gentle bend in the beach, we could make out what looked like a large garbage scow anchored in the water. On shore, a small group of clean-up workers were resting in the shade of a tent.

We stopped to talk with the crew leader. He didn't tell us his name, but said he was from Pensacola. He explained that he leads subcontractor disaster clean-up crews for a living.

He told us he had just arrived back in Pensacola from the Nashville flood. It was "an awful mess," he said. "Got almost no news coverage, though. I guess the media would rather watch the oil."

Farther along the beach we found more evidence of oil pollution on the surface of a discarded motor oil jug (below). The irony was evident.

Some boater, somewhere, had tossed the emptied jug overboard as if this one small addition of plastic pollution could not possibly harm the vast waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Later, fresh oil from BP's broken Deepwater Horizon well had clung to it like a life raft. Now, the whole mess had made landfall to despoil the beach.

More evidence of the transport of leaking oil through man's careless littering rested near the water's edge, fresher than the last. An old, weathered plastic bottle had washed up on the beach (below). Stuck to its underside was an orange-colored, pulpous patty of oil. Grains of sand clung to it, trapped by the sticky substance.

We passed the garbage scow, or barge, we had seen earlier. In the bow was a huge garbage container. Behind that, about midship, we noticed a meeting seemed to be taking place.

About half a dozen men were sitting around a makeshift table under a tent (below). One was writing something down. At that distance we couldn't be sure but it looked like he was dressed in a cream-colored suit and wearing a hazmat vest over it.

Others in work clothes were milling about looking for shade wherever they could find it.

We mused at the scene: a rusty old barge that serves as a meeting place for swells in suits as well as shade for workers in blue jeans dressed for hard labor. A catastrophic oil spill levels everybody.

At the western-most end of Santa Rosa Island we came upon three figures fishing (below).

"You don't plan on eating anything you catch, do you?" we asked.

The two men, both locals, said yes, they did. "Haven't seen any oil yet," one added as he baited a hook.

"There are tarballs all along the beach," we pointed out.

"Didn't see 'em," the other man claimed in a surly way as he turned back toward his pole.

The fishermen didn't seem to want company any more than the blue heron did. As we turned back to retrace our steps it occurred to us that all three of these creatures may well be the last fishers at Pensacola Pass for months or even years to come. Of the three, however, only one of them truly did not know what was about to happen to his way of life.

We turned back to take one last photo. All three were back at their labors, seemingly oblivious to the arriving oil.

Just beyond, we could plainly see the dividing line between bay and Gulf. It's where the turquoise water of the western tip of Santa Rosa island meets the deep blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico (below).

On the return trip we saw a pontoon party boat had been beached. A dozen or so women were swimming, sitting, wading, and standing in the water (below). They appeared to be of a wide range of ages, from their twenties to the sixties.

Although it was early afternoon, these women were feeling no pain. Several of them hollered out and raised their glasses in a raucous greeting as we approached.

"Are you members of some club?" we stupidly asked.

"Thas' raht, hon'," one shouted back amid a din of laughter. "We're the N'awlins Girls."

"Y'all like wimmin or men?" another asked to more peels of laughter.

Standing there at the water's edge, talking with half-dressed strangers in the midst of the largest natural disaster in U.S. history, it seemed an odd question, yes, but we have long since given up judging others for how they are reacting to the BP oil spill.

We considered a judicious reply. We answered that we liked them both but only slept with women.

"Wall, thas' all right, then. Y'all come rah't in the water."

We politely declined and wished the visitors well. That evening, She Who Must Be Obeyed mentioned that she thought she had seen some of the same women on the television news, being interviewed by another TV reporter while they partied on Orange Beach.

It was after this that we passed a Pensacola News Journal photographer. We laughed to ourselves as we contemplated him being cross-examined about his sexual orientation by the "N'awlins Girls."

It was then that we met Dusty Warner, the park ranger who told us he's section head for the Unified Command. He was marching smartly behind us as we walked toward the fishing pier where we'd first met Cheeseburger and his owner.

We stopped and the ranger quickly caught up. He was an enormously friendly, charming man -- and completely open about who he was and what he had been doing.

We were so interested in Ranger Warner's description of his decision to permit booming of Pensacola Pass that we didn't even think to ask him why he happened to be in full uniform walking the beach on such a hot day, or where he was coming from. It was only later that we realized the only place he could have come from was that old barge, the one where we had seen the indistinct figure of a man, dressed in an oddly formal way under a hazmat vest, writing at a table.

We have no way of knowing for sure, but we'd like to think our little pocket camera accidentally captured the very moment history was made on that old barge and Pensacola Pass was closed for the first time since the Civil War.

Pensacola Bay to be Boomed Tonight

UPDATED BELOW
The entrance to Pensacola Bay will be boomed this afternoon and tonight. The decision was made between 12 noon and 1 pm today by Dusty Warner, Sectional Superintendent for the Unified Command out of Mobile.

Not long after that, we were wandering along the beach at Ft. Pickens and happened to run into Warner. He told us he had just approved a modified version of the V-shaped boom proposal submitted some weeks ago by Escambia County.

"Most of the bay entrance will be boomed," he explained. "One part will remain open."

Booms will be extended across the bay entrance to contain the oil and channel it, like a funnel, to the opening. A single oil skimmer will be stationed at the opening to skim oil from the surface.

We spoke as spongy orange tarballs (see left) and smaller, black weathered tarballs were washing ashore in the surf all along the western tip of Santa Rosa Island.

Warner, who also is a veteran ranger for the U.S. Park Service, said he serves as a Unified Command superintendent for emergency response "incidents," as they are known, all around the country. He's been in Mobile since shortly after the Deepwater Horizon well blow-out.

According to Warner, the revised booming plan will present no danger to sea turtles.

"If a turtle comes up against a hard surface like a boom it will turn away and seek another route," he said. "But if it meets something soft like those," he said, gesturing toward a large stack of plastic pom-poms near near the bay entrance, "a sea turtle will try to push through and get entangled and die."

Consequently, the bags of pom-poms arranged by subcontractors awaiting permission from the Unified Command (see below) will not be used, after all, at the entrance to the bay.

"They won't work anyway," Ranger Warner added. "They're pretty much worthless in the current out there."


UPDATE
6-11 6pmAbout 5:00 pm Escambia County issued a press release confirming Pensacola Pass will close "at 7:00 p.m. today, June 11." The News Journal reported about two hours after our initial conversation with Ranger Warner that "boom will be deployed across the opening of the pass and the pass will be navigationally restricted during incoming (flood) tide as waters enter Pensacola Bay."

A Trip Down the Emer-Oiled Coast: Friday June 4 BP Oil Spill Update

"I've been all over the world; even south Florida. I've seen many pretty places, but this beach is the most beautiful I've ever seen."

-- Northeastern clean-up worker, June 4, 2010.

By now the whole world knows that an advance tongue of BP's lake of oil has reached Pensacola Beach. Indeed, it is washing up on beaches along the entire forty-mile length of Santa Rosa Island.

Today we took a leisurely trip along the westernmost half of what used to be known as the "Emerald Coast." We began at Navarre Beach and gradually proceeded, with refreshment stops, all the way to the western tip of Santa Rosa Island. Here's what we found:

1. Navarre Beach Near Normal.

To all outward appearances, Navarre Beach late this morning was unusually crowded for a Friday morning but otherwise normal. Lots of sunbathers, young kids gamboling in the surf, even a surf boarder or two.

Only a close inspection of the waves as they spent themselves on the beach revealed the occasional small, orange tarball. There were not many, even at mid-day. And, most were as small as dime; a very few were the size of a quarter.

The vast majority of tarballs were small, burnt-orange in color, and gooey-soft.We looked particularly for any signs that young swimmers were coming in contact with the oil. We saw none. Everybody seemed to be having a great time.

2. BP Clean-up Workers.

We happened to arrive at Navarre Beach just as three clean-up crews were unloading from a fleet of brand-new oversized white vans. Some of the vans were so new they had only temporary plates.

The vehicles bore license plates from a variety of states -- Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina. From the looks of it, BP has rented every van they could lay their corporate tentacles on throughout the Southeast.

Just for fun, we snapped a photo of a couple of the license plates and mashed them up (below).
These plates are from two of eight vans we saw at Navarre Beach. All were disgorging workers who had been given no protective clothing. After each crew exited a van they gathered together, then headed immediately for the beach.

The crews had shockingly few tools. One or two were armed with a shovel, some with sticks and plastic bags. Most were carrying nothing.

3. Clean-up Crews Under Wraps.

Every time we encountered clean-up crews, we tried to engage them in conversation. Normally, we're pretty good at that. We're a talkative sort, fairly friendly, and even if we do say so ourselves, we've had a lot of experience, from one end of the globe to the other, at getting complete strangers to open up.

Not today. Not with this crowd. We tried talking with several of the workers at several different beaches. Almost all refused to say a word.

Some ignored us. Most merely shook their heads from side to side as if to say, 'No, man. I can't say a word' or 'Don't you get it? I need this job.'

One brave worker did tell us he wasn't "from around here." But he, too, silently shook his head when we followed up by asking where he was from.

It was obvious that all the workers were under strict instructions to talk to no one. Many seemed, frankly, terrified to be approached. One fellow referred us to what he called "the head man." He turned out to be a middle-aged guy with a southern accent and a large paunch hanging over his belt. His hands looked as soft as his belly.

He, too, admitted he wasn't "from here." But he wouldn't say where he came from. When we asked, he silently dug into his pants and, after a short struggle, pulled out a small roll of ten identical thin strips of paper, all bearing the same typed message:

"Here," he said, handing us one of the strips. "You got any questions you call this number."

"Do they know where you're from?" we asked innocently.

On the slip of paper was a Louisiana phone number. If you want to know who we were trying to talk to, give 'em a call.

4. Opal Beach, National Seashore.

At Opal Beach, a few miles down the road, we had much better success talking with two bird watchers and their family. Using a classy spotting scope, they thought they might have identified two Pacific something-or-others -- loons or gulls or whatever -- out over the water. "They're quite rare here," I was assured.

They told me that just minutes before I arrived, clean-up crews had been covering the beach in front of them.
"Then, one of them got a call," the woman said. "We heard him say something about a report of oil at Navarre Beach. They all packed up and went running for their vans. And, poof! they were gone."

In fact, the tarballs at Opal Beach were bigger and much more in evidence than anything we had seen on Navarre Beach. The average size of tarball there was a half-dollar, as one of our new found friends illustrated (up, left).

With every ebb of the surf, dozens of coin-sized black tarballs and larger patties of orange goo remained behind. With every flow, more came ashore.


5. Pensacola Beach.

Pensacola Beach was crowded, too. Partly, perhaps, due to all the national media crews that have descended on us.

Conditions there were worse than at Opal Beach. Tarballs were a bit larger and much more numerous. This didn't stop sunbathers or most swimmers, at least not while we watched.

They should have taken a look at what we saw. A CNN crew member had been handed two tarballs, so she told us, by a 'clam digger' who said he had found them at Navarre Beach. (See photo at the top of this article.) She had placed them in a 16 oz. styrofoam cup.

"But they melted in the heat of the sun," she complained.

A woman standing next to us asked if she could take a picture of the melted tarballs.

"Does this belong to you?" she asked the CNN woman.

For answer, the CNN woman snickered. "It belongs to BP, I guess."

6. Ft. Pickens.

At Ft. Pickens, on the very western edge of Santa Rosa Island, things remained much as they were yesterday. At early afternoon, the V-shaped boom planned to protect Pensacola Bay was still not deployed, although it looked like preparations were underway.

A small crew of workmen were taking a break in the shade of a small bathroom building when we pulled up. Many had been here, they told us, for more than a month. They were employed by a subcontractor of BP's.

These men were outfitted with hazmat suits and safety equipment, although we didn't see any air filter masks.

"They're coming -- tomorrow," one man said. We couldn't be sure, but it sounded as if he was quoting a boss who might have been repeating the same phrase day after day.

These men spoke much more freely than the other clean-up crews we had encountered. We asked how the oil spill was affecting Ft. Pickens. One man from the Northeast answered, "We've got it under control."

"You know?" he added. "I've been all over the world; even south Florida. I've seen many pretty places, but this beach is the most beautiful I've ever seen. Even with the oil."

We who live on Pensacola Beach know he's right. For now. Many of us also fear that soon enough he will be wrong.

BP's oil has now come ashore. It will get worse here, no matter what happens at the wellhead from now through August. The beach can be cleaned, eventually. In the meantime, we'll just have to enjoy what pleasures the beach still can give -- and pitch in to help keep it that way.

More on that last point another day.

add pic minor edit 6-05am

Monday May 24: BP Oil Spill Update

1. Local Air quality.

The hourly Air Quality Index for Pensacola, including observed particulate matter, can be accessed here. Earlier today, it looked rather normal for this time of year; fair but not good. How much of the particulates in the air may be due to Mother Nature's insistence that flowers and plants continue send their propagating pollen into the air and how much to man's preparations of the planet for the ants we will not hazard a guess.

2. Gulf Coast Oil Forecast.

WKRG-TV out of Mobile has begun posting a useful daily "oil forecast" on its web site, along with links to other important information. For now, it appears, the oil is expected to continue moving primarily "west and south," as you can see and hear below:

3. Pensacola Oil-cast.

As for Pensacola and nearby beaches, three screenshots we took this morning give you some idea of why forecasting the future direction of BP's spreading lake of oil is so tricky. The screenshots are taken from the University of South Florida's "Ocean Circulation Group" web site.

Within the Gulf and along the coast, the mix of winds, surface water currents, and subsurface water currents is complex and sometimes contradictory. Below is the final frame of an animation forecasting prevailing wind direction:

And a second screenshot, below, is the final frame for the same time of an animated forecast for prevailing surface water currents:
Notice how the arrows for wind and water don't always agree?

Finally, below is a screenshot of the subsurface oil measured by as of the end of the animation period, May 27:
To see each of the full animations, and more, visit the web site for USF's "Ocean Circulation Group."

4. Mobile 'Graduation' Day on Pensacola Beach.

On one Sunday in May, every year, a large and predominantly black crowd from Mobile, Alabama, makes the trek to Pensacola Beach. We've written about this before here here and here and here. It's one of the larger events on Pensacola Beach distinguished by crowds of visitors motivated in some way by a particular cultural affinity.

The so-called "Mobile graduation" Sunday ranks right up there on the stress-o-meter of some local residents with the invasion of drunken Bubbas for the Mardi Gras parade; the hormone-driven invasion of college students over Spring Break; and Pensacola Beach's unique "Gay Memorial Day Weekend." We would have added early August's "Bushwhacker Festival," but we're not sure excessive drinking and listening to ear-splitting music is a recognized cultural identity.

This year, the Mobile 'graduation' thing went off without a hitch. The feared violence of past years, the overtly racist reception occasionally experienced by some visitors, and BP's oil spill were not in evidence.

"By 2 p.m.," Thyrie Bland of the PNJ reports, "the crowd remained light and some of the extra deputies assigned to work at the beach Sunday were let go." A few thousand more showed up late in the afternoon, but "it wasn't as big as last year," according to Deputy Sheriff Sgt. Mike Ward.

5. Pensacola Geography Lesson.

The other day we mentioned that a few tarballs washed up on the beach at Ft. Pickens. An estimable neighboring blogger we admire, Rick Outzen, did the same.

One of our readers, another estimable object of our admiration, took umbrage at Rick's referring to the fort as being on "Pensacola Beach." Then he, so we understand, took umbrage at her for taking umbrage.

We were going to ignore the minor contretemps, but then, last night, a question popped up on the Internet Tubes. "Admin" for something called RAEstate ("Consumption and Real Estate") posted this:

Question for anyone who lives or ever been to Pensacola Beach? [I]n the current there in June and I wonder how Pensacola is and how close is the public beach? [sic]

It is not uncommon for otherwise intelligent folk to confuse Pensacola or even Ft. Pickens with Pensacola Beach. Technically, they are all separate legal entities, just as Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan each has separate legal status, although most folk broadly refer to each of them as "New York City."

We see no harm in that. The five boroughs of New York may seem vastly different to those who live in New York, but to the rest of us they all kind of mush together in one huge, crowded, smelly, exciting, ugly, dangerous, wonderful metropolis.

So, too, Pensacola and nearby environs probably mush together in the eyes of past and prospective visitors. The area shares essentially the same ecology and weather (not to mention the same economy, politics, and culture).
Even more so are Pensacola Beach and Ft. Pickens part of the same barrier island environment. They border one another and share about twenty miles of the same stretch of beach, the same winds, and the same water currents. Click here or on the map:

The political differences are vast, of course. One is an unincorporated Golden Goose without democratic representation that Escambia County seems intent on killing with higher and higher taxes, tolls, high rise buildings, and ridiculous elevated highways. The other is part of the federally-protected Gulf Islands National Seashore and, except for the nineteenth century fort, actually looks like a barrier island should.

Some day soon, perhaps, Pensacola Beach and the Fort Pickens part of the National Seashore will be physically separated. In the meantime, everyone is right, as far as we are concerned. They ought to save their umbrages for a better opportunity, like throwing them at BP.

Tarballs at Ft. Pickens

WALA-TV, Mobile, reports tarballs have been found on the beach at Ft. Pickens, which is the National Seashore Park situated at the extreme western end of Santa Rosa Island.

At least one of the tarballs was "new" enough that it reportedly "melted" while being inspected. The station does not mention if lab tests confirm it is from the BP oil disaster.

Dept. of Amplification
5-23 am

Rick's Blog has a little more... And, he wonders if Mr. Oil Spill is "changing sides" after being run over by the truck of bad BP publicity. Too little, too late, too much of a "drill, baby, drill" record, Jeff.

Friday, May 7 Oil Gusher Report: The Waiting Game

1. Waiting for Oil.

Waiting for someone or something, good or bad, that never shows up is a familiar theme in the theater world. Sometimes the anticipated arrival doesn't happen for reasons which remain obscure, as in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Sometimes rescue or redemption is prevented by an interceding act of violence (Clifford Odet's Waiting For Lefty).

On rare occasions, the non-appearance of something -- say, the calamity of a new ice age -- turns out to be an uplifting occurrence that reaffirms humanity's indomitable spirit. As the maid Sabina says in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth:

"We've managed to survive for some time, now, catch as catch can, the fat and the lean, and if the dinosaurs don't trample us to death, and if the grasshoppers don't eat up our garden, we'll all live to see better days, knock on wood."

That about sums up the mood settling in over Pensacola. Time and again we've been warned to expect oil within the next couple of days. Somehow, we've managed to avoid it, "knock on wood."

2. Warmer water.

As the underwater gusher off the Louisiana coast continues spilling oil into the Gulf at an estimated rate of 210,000 gallons a day, at mid-day Friday there still was no sign of it in Pensacola. At the entrance to Pensacola Bay, "the water is definitely getting warmer" we were told by two scuba divers as they emerged from an hour's dive off the western tip of Santa Rosa Island.

John Anderson and Tom Holloway moved to Pensacola from Salt Lake City just a month ago. They laughed as they told us how they scoured all kinds of locations looking for the perfect place to do some serious scuba diving.

"Oh, look!" John good-naturedly mimicked his initial reaction one day in Salt Lake City when they came across Pensacola on a map. "Great weather, lots of clear water, and no oil pollution."

So far, they say, it's all been true. They're hoping it stays that way.

"The water is definitely warmer," Anderson reports. "Lots of Angelfish down there, which we wouldn't be seeing if it was cooler."

3. Boomtown.

The anti-oil efficacy of plastic booms has been widely questioned in the past week, as Rick Jervis reports for USA Today from the Louisiana coast:

Globs of the rust-colored oil water slither under and over the outstretched booms from the boats. Dead Portuguese man-of-wars and clumps of sargassum bob in the clumpy, dirt-colored water. Oil droplets can be seen 10 to 15 feet under the surface.

"They're not collecting much oil," and they're not going to be able to," Rick Steiner, a former University of Alaska marine biologist and oil-spill response consultant said... . "The oil is too dispersed in the water. It's going to go wherever the current takes it."

Still, mile upon mile of plastic booms continue sprouting up along valued shorelines and estuaries in the Pensacola area. Sometime in the past two days a long string of them was added to the north shore of Santa Rosa Island inside the Fort Pickens National Seashore.

Today, a trawler was anchored off Dead Man's Island on the north side of Pensacola Beach, where booms will be installed some time in the next day.

More are planned, we've been told, for the entrance to Little Sabine Bay on Pensacola Beach.

4. Air Purity.

So far, no one has smelled any of the oil sloshing around the Gulf. The air quality in Pensacola is as good as it gets. Which is to say, "good" is as high as it can be rated on air quality maps for the oil spill region now being published daily by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

5. Fishing continues.

Although fishing remains banned in federal waters, nearer to shore state fishing grounds remain open. From the beach we saw no fewer than a dozen boats trawling the sea, presumably within the three mile limit.

6. Future beach preview?

Under today's bright sun, the pure sand on Pensacola Beach is blindingly white. However, on the road to Ft. Pickens we've been noticing that in the wake of the frequent tidal wash-overs which the island continues to suffer (since the hurricanes '04 and '05 ) one often sees exposed in especially low-lying areas small pieces of asphalt and dark detritus left over from the old blacktop road.

Who knows? Mother Nature may well be offering us a preview of what our beach will look like a few years from now, long after the oil spill has been stopped, unless we change our ways.

Let's hope not:

New, Much Larger Oil Leak

In yet another parallel to the Montara deep well oil spill in Australia last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced overnight that BP's Deepwater Horizon well is leaking five times as much oil as the oil corporation previously admitted.

From today's New Orleans Times-Picayune:

As a sheen of oil moved closer to the Louisiana coast Wednesday, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revised their estimates of the amount of oil that has been leaking from the oil well from 1,000 barrels a day to up to 5,000 barrels a day, or about 210,000 gallons.

BP officials also discovered a new leak in the twisted pipelines that were severed when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank into the Gulf of Mexico last week. But Doug Suttles, chief operating officer with BP Exploration and Production, said this does not change the overall amount of oil believed to be coming from the well.
* * *
As winds shifted to the southeast Wednesday, forecasts showed for the first time that the outer bands of the oil slick spilling from a deep well in the Gulf of Mexico will reach the southern fringes of the Louisiana coast by late Friday.

Forecasts called for continued winds from the southeast through the weekend and also unusually high tides, meaning oil could continue to move into the fragile Mississippi River delta region for days.

According to New York Times reporters Campbell Robertson and Leslie Kaufman, when Suttles insists that BP considers there is no discrepancy in the volume of leaking oil, it's because, "The new, far larger estimate of the leakage rate... was within a range of estimates given the inexact science of determining the rate of a leak so far below the ocean’s surface."

In other words, to BP oil officials 5,000 barrels of leaking crude per day is the same as 1,000 barrels a day. Newer New Math? Or, the usual corporate dissembling? Confusion -- and quite probably misinformation-- rages among the various news reports coming out of the Gulf of Mexico.

As happened in Australia, as well, separating fact from corporate fiction is a tough task for journalists when the site of the disaster remains at sea. As has happened before, however, the true magnitude of the leak will only begin to become apparent when the oil leak begins to come ashore.

WWL-TV explains with visuals:



edited and updated 4-29 am

Pensacola First Response To Oily Armaggedon

"Most people around here have no idea what is about to happen. It will be a major, major disaster."

-- U.S. Park Service Ranger, Ft. Pickens, Santa Rosa Island
(Apr. 28, 2010)

As of this writing, it has not yet been reported that the U.S. Coast Guard has managed to set alight any of the pools of oil floating offshore in Louisiana near the site of the Deepwater disastrous oil spill. The effort can do little to stem the tide of oil heading shoreward, anyway.

At most, only "a few thousand gallons" can be set on fire at any one time. After the fires die away, toxic residue will remain in the water for months or even years, and eventually wash ashore or sink to smother sea life.

Prevailing winds are expected to shift as soon as late this afternoon. That may make corralling small clumps of floating oil and setting them afire even more difficult, if not impossible. As a midday report on the Pensacola News Journal web site reports, "Shifting winds this afternoon are expected to push a massive sheen of oil closer to the Florida coast in coming days."

Locally, the U.S. Park Service has gone to "Cat 2" status. The alert status is equivalent to a strong hurricane endangering mariners that falls just below "major" hurricane status. Booms are being unloaded and placed along particularly sensitive shorelines near Ft. Pickens and Perdido Key.

Park employees tell us, however, that the booms are largely a mere palliative. "They really can't do much if anything to protect the sea life or the Gulf environment," one ranger who asked for anonymity told us today. "It's for public relations as much as anything."

Chasidy Fisher Hobbs of the respected, very mainstream "Emerald Coastkeepers, Inc.," sent out an email this afternoon that's gone as viral as any email can. Here it is, more or less formatted as received:

THERE IS SOMETHING VERY WRONG WITH AN INDUSTRY WHOSE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO CLEANING UP A MESS IS TO BURN IT!!

Here are a few things I have learned this morning: We can only hope that this terrible tragedy moves our country closer to energy independence with alternative energy sources.

1. BP contractors are not accepting help from any volunteers and do not expect to;

2. Apparently BP contractors at Pensacola NAS have a plan to keep the oil just offshore and then collect it in a terminal containment boom for removal;

3. It has been deemed impossible to block the pass due to fluctuating currents;

4. Trained personnel have been brought in to our area and have begun booming off sensitive areas around the pass;

5. A central operations unit is being set up in Mobile to coordinate efforts in this area should the burning of the oil prove folly.

We may not be able to help remove oil today, but we can all help to keep rigs out of Florida waters. Thanks to one your Directors, Derek Cosson (ProgressivePensacola.com) you can help with a few simple clicks.

There is now a form letter on our website so you can send a message to Florida legislators letting them know that we do not want rigs in State waters. Please take 1 minute to send a message: http://www.emeraldcoastkeeper.org/2010/04/27/327/>

Then, pass the link on and get as many folks to send the message as you can.