Oil spill video: Oiled birds on Cat Island

By Brian Skoloff and Cain Burdeau of The Associated Press
Published: Monday, June 14, 2010 The sand dunes and islands of Barataria Bay, a huge expanse of water and marsh on Louisiana’s coast, have become the latest casualty of the environmental disaster spewing from BP’s offshore oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. And fishers are bitter. Oil-caked birds, stranded sea turtles, globs of gooey brown crude on beaches, coated crabs and mats of tar have been found throughout the inlets and mangroves that dot the bay. The oil has coated the water with a rainbow sheen and is threatening the complex web of wetlands, marshes and bayous that make up this ecological and historic treasure. Everything from crabbing to bait fishing is shutting down, and the anger on the bayou is palpable. “It’s scary, you know, man,” marine mechanic Jimmy Howard said from his hurricane-battered fishing shack, a cigar stub stuffed in his mouth. “I see them doing what they can, you know. All the boats going out, all the boom. I’m hoping they can contain it.” Barataria teems with wildlife, including alligators, bullfrogs, bald eagles and migratory birds from the Caribbean and South America. There are even Louisiana black bears in the upper basin’s hardwood forests. Before the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, oyster and shrimp boats plowed through these productive bays as fishers snapped up speckled trout and redfish within minutes of casting their lines. Now it resembles an environmental war zone. Many of the bay’s nesting islands for birds are girded by oil containment boom, and crews in white disposable protective suits change out coils of absorbents to soak up the sticky mess. “The whole place is full of oil,” said fishing guide Dave Marino. “This is some of the best fishing in the whole region, and the oil’s coming in just wave after wave. It’s hard to stomach, it really is.” …  C.C. Lockwood, a wildlife photographer whose iconic images of the vanishing coast are a coffee-table feature, has been out in the slick capturing its impact. “It looks to me like the roots (of marsh plants) are pretty much smothered and they will die at the edges,” Lockwood said. “I saw what I counted to be about 1,000 dead hermit crabs. I saw blue crabs with faces covered in oil.” … “Once the mousse, the floating oil gets in there and oils the seagrass there are many different types of organisms that live in the sediment,” said Richard Pierce, director of the Center for Ecotoxicology at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla. “Essentially they will die and that can last for years.” …

Oil spill spreads bitter disappointment in Barataria Bay