oil pollution

Washington’s political wars rarely match reality back home.

Dead dolphin on Mississippi Beach in 2011                   Photo: Laurel Lockamy

Since BP’s catastrophic oil blowout nearly two years ago, Laurel Lockamy has gotten pretty good at photographing the dead. She’s snapped images of dozens of lifeless turtles and dolphins, countless dead fish, birds, armadillos and nutria and pretty much anything that crawls, swims or flies near the white sandy Mississippi beaches of her Gulfport home.

Down in Texas there’s an old saying; “You can put your boots in the oven but it don’t make them biscuits.”

This weekend, the Woodstock of the environmental movement is on full display, not in a remote farm in New York, but deep in the heart of the nation's Capitol.

Sea turtles continue to wash ashore along the Gulf, forcing the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to scramble and figure out what is causing the spike.

The baby dolphin lay on its side, one flipper pointed toward cloudy skies, rocking back and forth with the waves near Innarity Point, FL  

“I looked and saw a baby porpoise, a terrible sight to see,” local resident Chris McCune told WKRG-TV News out of nearby Mobile, AL.

As a resident of coastal Mississippi for more than 30 years, Shirley  Tillman is used to seeing a few drum fish, sea gulls or jelly fish wash up on nearby sandy shores. It’s a fact of life living by the sea.

Photo update: pictures of the oil slick are now coming in.

The Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially large oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico not far from the Deepwater Horizon site. According to a knowledgeable source, the slick was sighted by a helicopter pilot on Friday and is about 100 miles long. A fishing boat captain said he went through the slick yesterday and it was strong enough to make his eyes burn.

Capt Lori DeAngelis runs a boating business called Dolphin Queen Cruises, which ferries tourists in Orange Beach, AL, to see pods of dolphins at play in the Gulf. Capt Lori reveres dolphins. In fact, she used to be licensed to handle the federally protected mammals.

“They are like kin to us,” she says.

The BP oil disaster put a huge dent in Capt Lori’s dolphin-watching business, but now it’s personal. Recently she watched over a young adult male dolphin that had washed up on the sandy shores of Orange Beach, lying motionless with its mouth agape.

In the Gulf, the temperature is rising. The magical spring season should soon bring warm waters teeming with life back to the region’s marshy bayous and sandy shores.