An Alaskan Perspective on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

I read this excerpt from yesterday's MSNBC update on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"More than 200,000 gallons of oil a day are spewing from the blown-out well at the site of BP's Deepwater "Horizon rig, which exploded April 20 and sank two days later. Crews are using at least six remotely operated vehicles to try to shut off an underwater valve, but so far they've been unsuccessful. Meanwhile, high winds and waves are pushing oily water over the booms meant to contain it. Besides BP, a slew of federal and state agencies are scrambling to minimize the onslaught of damage."

I worked for three months as an oil spill technician cleaning up Bunker C fuel that had spilled from the wreck of the Selandang Ayu. The Selandang Ayu, a cargo vessel transporting soy beans and the fuel oil to ports in Indonesia, broke apart in heavy seas at the mouth of Skan Bay near Unalaska Island, Alaska.

The wheelhouse of the Selandang Ayu. The front broke off and lies half sunk to the starboard side of the main structure.

The Selandang Ayu belched approximately 450,000 gallons of Bunker C into the areas of Scan and Makushin Bays. For months and months the oil spill techs scraped, shoveled, scooped and bagged many thousands of twenty pound sacks of Bunker C mixed with soybeans off of the beaches around Scan Bay. Bunker C is the heaviest of fuels distilled from pure crude. This relatively inert fuel oil coagulated and formed balls and strings of oil. It was buried in the sand, packed between tiny rocks and huge boulders. We even found it high up on cliffs where the twenty five foot waves that pounded the vessel on the night of the storm had deposited it. When the sun came out and the temperature rose, we watched helplessly as it melted and bled down further into the rocks.

By contrast, the broken well in the Gulf of Mexico where the rig caught on fire is spewing pure crude oil out into the Gulf at a daily rate that is half of the total amount spilled from the Selandang Ayu. This crude contains every form of gas and oil that can be distilled. There are organic volatile compounds containing toxins and the denser oil that would be distilled into the heavier fuel oils. I cannot imagine the difficulties faced by clean up crews in the days, weeks and months ahead. A part of me wishes I could be there to help, but I don't think my body could withstand the strain. I was exhausted mentally and physically after I returned from Dutch Harbor at the end of my contract. I was thirty eight then. I am forty-three today. Still, I part of me...

The migratory season has begun along the coast of the Gulf. I wept to see the flocks of sea birds landing on the lines of booms set along the coast. For whatever reasons, birds and mammals cannot seem to differentiate between the oil and the water. They invariably end up landing and diving into it to find food with disastrous effect. Because the oil contains so many toxic components, the animals will die from contact with it if not treated immediately, and even with treatment they often suffer the long term effects of ingesting the oil when they preen their feathers or clean their fur.

The chain of spill techs as they pass hundreds of bags of oil to the awaiting skiffs and super sacks.

I wish everyone who uses products derived from crude oil could spend a day heaving a thousand bags of oil into super sacks. I wish they could spend a week caked in the stuff as they try and scoop gallons upon gallons of oil as it seeps down between rocks, coats every strand of saw grass and sticks to your tyvex. Would it make a difference if they could feel the sweat pour down the hollow between their shoulder blades as they crouch down in front of a hillock of saw grass cutting down a two foot swath by hand using only a butcher knife?

Cutting back on our thirst for crude would have been difficult enough in the seventies when most of what we consumed was in the form of fuel oil and gas to heat our homes, run our cars, trains and heavy equipment. We were so blessed then to have our homes heated with such a convenient fuel. Our parents didn't have to haul in wood, coal or oil each morning to warm their families. We could have reigned in our thirst then, but we needed more. Now our need for plastics competes with our need for fuel. Each barrel of oil must stretch much further than it did in the seventies. How much more difficult will it be now in an age when plastic makes up so much of our physical world and supports so much of the infrastructure of our culture?

I see the oil advancing on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico not as raw crude but as advancing formation of millions of laptops, cell phones, plastic toys sold with burger meals, gas tanks on lawnmowers, snowmobiles, and the countless millions of other items distilled and produced from crude. I threw my share of junk into the that cesspool that could potentially devastate yet another patch of nature on the planet. I am no saint even after I waded through the muck and fought to save a patch of planet.

I am writing this today to share my shame, and tell the story of my experience. I want to give a different perspective on this latest and potentially greatest oil spill. Maybe I can jog a thought or two. Maybe not, but I needed to get this off my chest. I don't have the final answer, but the problem is quite literally "blowing in the wind" and the wind is relentless, and it is heading for shore. If we could just make a dent in the debris of our lives, we would be astounded and amazed at the beauty to be and beheld by not only ourselves but our future generations.

Scan Bay, Alaska after a storm