Be Wary of the National Media

from Although their livelihoods depend on knowing where the action is in the Mississippi River delta, charter fishing captains in Venice have never been so happy to bring their fares back empty-handed.

Angling for a big story, news reporters from around the world have been chartering boats to check out aerial reports of oil washing ashore from the massive Deepwater Horizon leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

A closer look has nearly always failed to substantiate the possible sightings, though reports of oil hitting the Chandeleur Islands were confirmed Thursday.

"I got more oil leaking out my boat's exhaust than they got in the west Delta," joked charter captain Brent Ballay.

Ballay and a couple of other captains took a 30-mile trip in and around Southwest Pass on Thursday morning to check out a news report of oil coming ashore there.

"The water's crystal clear and beautiful," he said, sitting on a dock at the Venice Marina. "There's no oil anywhere."

What they did find was brown foam along the current line, where fresh water meets salt water.

The foam is a natural phenomenon caused by decomposing vegetation bubbling to the surface, said David Ballay, Brent's father who founded the marina in the 1980s and sold it in 2002.

"Looking down from a plane, you might think that's oil, but it's not," David Ballay said. "I'll go put my sandwich out there on those booms, smear it around and eat it. That's how confident I am that there's no oil there."

Concerned about the spill's effect on the charter fishing industry, Brent Ballay said he has stopped taking people out to look for oil.

"We're just shooting ourselves in the foot by doing that," he said. "I'd rather take someone out with a camera to show people all the fish they can catch instead of all the death and destruction that we aren't having."

"There's the real story, right there," he added, pointing to a man stepping off a charter boat with a huge bucket of redfish and speckled trout.

That has been an all too uncommon sight during what is supposed to be the busiest time of year for charter fishing.

"We've had a tough time getting people to come down because of all the negative publicity," charter capatin Jeff Fuscia said as he filleted a red fish with an electric knife.

Fuscia said he saw a national TV news report about oil hitting the coastline Wednesday night.

"I thought, 'That's news to me, and I'm down here,'" he said. "I don't want to downplay it because there's a lot of oil out there; it just hasn't hit the coast."

Tennessee Floods

To those that know what it's like to live thru a flood and wait for help, please help those in Tennessee needing help. Here's a link. Thanks.

Louisiana Seafood is GOOD, y'all

Don't hesitate to buy and eat seafood from Louisiana. The spill has affected only sites EAST of the Mississippi. However, the areas WEST of the Mississippi are open and producing. Nearly 75% of Louisiana's seafood (fin fish/shrimp/oysters/crabs) comes from the sites WEST of the Mississippi.





Bon Apetit, y'all!

Classic John Stewart

Hilarious.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Beyond Awful
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A list of items needed in oilspill cleanup

From Gulf response dot org:

We are currently working with our response partners to identify needs. Individuals interested in gathering supplies in their community should use the list below as a guide. We are in the process of identifying staging areas where donated materials can be accepted. When those locations are identified they will be posted here. Please check back for regular updates.


Water
Gatorade
Bug spray
Sunscreen
Safety glasses (clear and dark)
Chicken boots
E-tech gloves
Safety utility knives
Diesel cans (yellow)
5-gallon gas cans
Outboard motor oil
Dip nets (small mesh)
Pool cleaning nets
Mosquito head nets
Flat shovels
Spade shovels
Pitch forks
Duct tape
Work vests

P&G sends Dawn for Oil Spill Cleanup

CINCINNATI -- The Procter & Gamble Company is now lending a helping hand after the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Over the weekend, P&G chartered a truck to deliver a 1,000 bottles of Dawn from the Kansas City plant to wildlife rescue centers in Louisiana and Alabama.

For the last 30 years, P&G has partnered with the International Bird Rescue Research Center and the Marine Mammal Center to assist in wildlife rescue efforts.

Rescuers have centers set up in the Gulf to clean the birds but they've encountered weather problems so it's taking longer than expected to rescue them.

Bird specialists say Dawn is the best product since it will cut through grease without hurting the skin.

"Those two benefits are really applicable when you think about the rescue efforts because the oil that's on these birds is extremely thick and the birds themselves have very delicate feathers and very sensitive skin so Dawn can aid in that rescue effort to clean the oil off of them," said Susan Baba with The Procter & Gamble Company.

P&G has a Facebook site set up to update folks on their current rescue efforts. For more information, click here.

Those Dead Sea Turtles

Necropsies completed on five of the 25 dead sea turtles found along Mississippi beaches in the past few days show no evidence of oil killing the reptiles.

In what my possibly be a coincidence, more than 30 dead turtles have been found stranded on Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula south of Houston this month - an unusually high number that has puzzled researchers, in part because most are so decomposed that there are few clues left about why they died.

A few minutes after I posted this, I was alerted to this article about the public being barred from the autopsies done on the turtles. Something's up.

Bucket Brigade map of the Gulf

 from NOLA dot com:

 

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade has created an "Oil Spill Crisis Map'' that will allow Gulf Coast residents to report fishermen out of work, endangered wildlife, oil on shore, oil sheens and other impacts of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Citizen reports can be submitted via text message, the web or e-mail. Those reports will appear on a web-based map of the Gulf Coast, the Bucket Brigade said in a news release today.

"The Oil Spill Crisis Map compiles and maps eyewitness accounts of the oil's effects in real time," said Anne Rolfes of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. "This is a tool for all of us to understand the extent of the damage."  

 

The map can be viewed at http://oilspill.labucketbrigade.org

 

The news release said reports can also be made at that site. Mobile phone users can text reports to 504. 27 27 OIL. Reports can also be sent to bpspillmap@gmail.com and through Twitter with the hashtag #BPspillmap. Eyewitness reports for the map require a description, and location information such as address, city and state, zip-code or coordinates. Citizen reporters can remain anonymous or disclose their contact information. Photos and video can be uploaded via the web.

 

Tulane University graduate students, Louisiana Bucket Brigade staff and California-based Radical Designs partnered to create the map, the news release said.

 

Donation site for oil spill

The Ritz-Carlton in downtown New Orleans is accepting donations of nylons, hair and fur on behalf of Matter of Trust (www.matteroftrust.org) to create booms to combat oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The hotel is currently the only donation location in New Orleans and one of only nine locations along the Gulf Coast. Help us with a PSA, an on-camera interview or a mention.

Donations can be dropped off at the entrance to the hotel at 921 Canal Street and will then be transported to the warehouse parking garage behind the hotel. Ritz-Carlton employees will work in teams to create booms by stuffing nylons with donated hair and fur. To find out more and see how the booms are made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwQOD_Ir2vQ.

Spa Director Daisye Suduran has been collecting nylons for the past six months and is spearheading this effort. The contact with Matters of Trust is Lisa Gautier, who can be reached at 415-235-2403 or team@matteroftrust.org.

 

BP Playing Dirty

Alabama Attorney General Troy King said tonight that he has told representatives of BP Plc. that they should stop circulating settlement agreements among coastal Alabamians.

The agreements, King said, essentially require that people give up the right to sue in exchange for payment of up to $5,000.

King said BP's efforts were particularly strong in Bayou La Batre.

This is similar to BP's efforts in Louisiana to have workers in the cleanup process
sign away any rights they may have in the future to sue BP over losses, just by working for them. The work applications were later torn up due to "confusion".

These S.O.B.s will stop at nothing.

Update 5/3/2010:


Despite a Sunday federal-court decision to the contrary, BP representatives today were telling would-be cleanup mariners that they had to absolve the oil giant of any liability if they wanted to get the lucrative work.

The contracts handed out at the John A. Alario Center on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish included language that was supposed to have been struck after the ruling by Judge Ginger Berrigan Sunday. In addition to the liability provisions, a copy of the contract obtained by The Lens prohibited the sailors from talking to reporters, another provision voided by Berrigan.

another scuzzbucket

The brother of Louisiana senator Landrieu thinks and hopes the oil slick will just go away.

Taylor expects spill to break up naturally - Oil Spill - SunHerald.com