A press release from the oil spill Joint Command could have been in the satirical "newspaper" The Onion.The half-dozen tar balls found at Dauphin Island were being sent to a lab for testing to determine their point of origin--as if there were any doubt that the tar came from the BP oil sick.
Warrant officer Adam Wine of the Coast Guard said they planned to test the tar, but "strongly suspected it came from the oil spill."
The Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) features a vivid video on its website documenting an overflight at ground zero of the BP oil catastrophe resulting from the explosion of the Transocean/Deepwater Horizon well platform on April 20.
This is the view that cannot be seen from sanitized satellite photos and composite maps depicting the direction and extent of the massive river of oil threatening entire ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico. Tar balls have already been reported on pristine Dauphin Island, and the damage is escalating daily.
Alabama resident John Wathen and pilot Tom Hutchings of SouthWings flew over the Gulf of Mexico last week to get a first hand look at the river of oil spreading from the site of the BP disaster.
SIS reports:
At nine miles out, they began to smell the oil. At 11 miles, they saw a visible sheen on the water. And at mile 87 off the Alabama coast, they reached ground zero of the disaster -- what Wathen described as a "red mass of floating goo" as far as the eye can see.
"The Gulf appears to be bleeding," he said.
"For the first time in my environmental career, I find myself using the word 'hopeless,'" Wathen continued. "We can't stop this. There's no way to prevent this from hitting our shorelines."
What you will see in this video is tragic, frightening, and almost unbelievable. It could be a trailer for a B horror movie, but it is all too real and flies in the face of positive PR spin flowing from Joint Incident Command that today included the announcement of the release of several rehabilitated birds.
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