There was a concerted effort to keep the media out of the area when the spill came about, we were kept from seeing the ROV photos, told they didn't exist and told that there was no live feed.
There was.
There have been a lot of corrections over what was available to the public, there were disturbing limitations to the media.
But it's starting to unfold just as BP and NOA are declaring victory, which for me, would be great, I would love that this nightmare be over as easily as they make it seem. But, it's not I who is saying it's not that simple.
I wrote yesterday about concerns regarding the use of corexit on the oil, a choice that many felt, including the EPA was inevitable. Corexit and the Oil That's Left, the Worst is Yet to Come.
The Crime of the Century: What BP and the US Government Don't Want You to Know, Part I is a piece that went up this morning that has some exstensive information but what caught my eye was the following... (Which some are saying has been debunked as CT, so I have included other information the diary)
In May, Mother Nature Network blogger Karl Burkart received a tip from an anonymous fisherman-turned-BP contractor in the form of a distressed text message, describing a near-apocalyptic sight near the location of the sunken Deepwater Horizon -- fish, dolphins, rays, squid, whales, and thousands of birds -- "as far as the eye can see," dead and dying. According to his statement, which was later confirmed by another report from an individual working in the Gulf, whale carcasses were being shipped to a highly guarded location where they were processed for disposal.
CitizenGlobal Gulf News Desk received photos that matched the report and are being published on Karl's blog today. Local fisherman in Alabama report sighting tremendous numbers of dolphins, sharks, and fish moving in towards shore as the initial waves of oil and dispersant approached in June. Many third- and fourth-generation fisherman declared emphatically that they had never seen or heard of any similar event in the past. Scores of animals were fleeing the leading edge of toxic dispersant mixed with oil. Those not either caught in the toxic mixture and killed out at sea, or fortunate enough to be out in safe water beyond the Source, died as the water closed in, and they were left no safe harbor. The numbers of birds, fish, turtles, and mammals killed by the use of Corexit will never be known as the evidence strongly suggests that BP worked with the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA, private security contractors, and local law enforcement, all of which cooperated to conceal the operations disposing of the animals from the media and the public.
I know many noted, where are the animals? There were so few photos of dead animals, so few photos of what was happening, although there were reports of many fish, dolphins and sharks swimming much closer to shore than usual in mid June.
GULF SHORES, Ala. (AP) - Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.
Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange phenomena.
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Day by day, scientists in boats tally up dead birds, sea turtles and other animals, but the toll is surprisingly small given the size of the disaster. The latest figures show that 783 birds, 353 turtles and 41 mammals have died - numbers that pale in comparison to what happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989, when 250,000 birds and 2,800 otters are believed to have died.
There is an extensive interview with Rikki Ott as well as video (which is posted below), who has been on the scene and who I believe to be a very credible source about this spill from her experience with the Exxon Valdez.
Because of fair use, I can't most of it, I encourage you to go read it.
Dauphin Island was one of the sites where carcasses of sperm whales were destroyed. The operational end of the island was closed to unauthorized personnel and the airspace closed. The U.S. Coast Guard closed off all access from the Gulf. This picture shows the area as it was prepped to receive the whale carcasses for disposal.
JC: There has been a great deal of discussion about the disappearance of the animals and the life in the ocean which seem to have vanished since this incident has occurred. What do you know about this?
RO: Well I have been down in the Gulf since May 3rd. It's pretty consistent what I have heard. First I heard from the offshore workers and the boat captains that were coming in and they would see windrows of dead things piled up on the barrier islands; turtles and birds and dolphins... whales...
JC: Whales?
RO: And whales. There would be stories from boat captains of offshore, we started calling death gyres, where the rips all the different currents sweep the oceans surface, that would be the collection points for hundreds of dolphins and sea turtles and birds and even whales floating. So we got four different times latitudes/longitude coordinates where (this was happening) but by the time we got to these lat/longs which is always a couple of days later there was nothing there.
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So people offshore were reporting this first and then carcasses started making it onshore. Then I started hearing from people in Alabama a lot and the western half of Florida - a little bit in Mississippi - but mostly what was going on then there was an attempt to keep people off the beaches, cameras off the beaches. I was literally flying in a plane and the FAA boundary changed. It was offshore first with the barrier islands and all of a sudden it just hopped right to shore to Alabama that's where we were flying over and the pilot was just like - he couldn't believe it - he was like look at that and I didn't know what he was looking but then he points at the little red line which had all of sudden grown and he just looked at me and said the only reason that they have done this is so people can't see what is going on. And what that little red line meant was no cameras on shore and three days later the oil came onshore and the carcasses came onshore into Alabama.
JC: That immediately preceded the first wave coming onshore?
RO: Pretty much. That preceded the first wave. It was June 2nd when the line changed and the FAA boundaries increased. Then people would -- I mean you walk beaches here at night it's hot so people walk beaches -- and they would see carcasses like sea turtles, a bird, a little baby dolphin, and immediately they would go over to it and immediately people would approach them, don't touch that if you touch it you will be arrested and within fifteen minutes there would be a white unmarked van that would just come out of nowhere and in would go the carcass and off it would go.
They were white unmarked vans at first. We've since heard many other stories from truckers who are trucking carcasses in refrigerated vans to Mexico. Carcasses are just not showing up where they need to which is as body counts for essentially this war on the gulf.
The Huffington Post mentions a post entitled 'Death Gyre' in the Gulf where there are photos of processing facility supposedly for dead animals. But there is not one dead animal in sight. There is an interview and a debunked text that was removed from this diary because it was suspect, I took it out until there is evidence it is authentic.
What's most alarming about this is not just the cover up, the fact that the media was kept out from a no fly zone. When something this horrific happens, we expect to see such awful things.
This has kept people from getting as upset as they should be, maybe it's kept people from getting more angry, from crying as much as they should have. Maybe it's made them think, "it could have been much worse."
Well it was much worse than we could have imagined.
But what this has done is it's hurt the ecologists and biologists who want to actually protect these animals from knowing the population numbers harmed in this catastrophe. How can we know how the sperm whale's viability if we have no idea how many perished in this nightmare?
How can we know the impact on the endangered sea turtles if we can't get a grasp on how many died.
It's not just about liability, it's about our responsibility as conservationists to understand the absolutely vastness of the situation. It just makes everyone's job harder in the long run and as this gets out, it deepens the general mistrust people have for corporate behemoths like BP and their agenda.
Protect their image rather than protect the environment, the people and the species that live there as well.
And about the corexit, that's coming next from the Huffington Post and the effects on human beings. But the fact that it's gone and not to be found, Tests suggest oil dispersant washing up on Alabama beaches.
The stained, brown water seen washing up in pockets along Alabama beaches for the last two weeks appears to contain the dispersant widely used on oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, according to a preliminary analysis.
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While heavy oil sheen was visible in the areas where the material was collected, little if any oil was found to be present in the samples, said Overton, who is analyzing oil samples for the federal government.
"We didn't see oil in the analysis we do, but I passed some of these water samples to a colleague who does fluorescence analysis," Overton said. "We saw some preliminary indications that there was a dispersant signal in the sample."
It has yet to be confirmed 100%, they will be doing further testing.
That's where I am now, waiting, further testing, watching the Gulf and hoping for the best, but we must hold BP accountable for what has happened. Just because we haven't seen it, doesn't mean it didn't happen or it is not there.