Anderson, South Carolina
A great legacy travel provides me is the collection of visual images in my memories of magnificent places visited. Images of tropical turquoise water washing up on white powered beaches are high on my list. My good fortune working on a cruise ship as a photographer ‘collecting’ images of many bucolic tropical isles with their sugar sand beaches was one of my favorite experiences. Journeys by submarine and semi-submersible vessels allowed for multi-sensory experiences of teeming diverse colorful life below those turquoise waters. Our blue planet has a nearly impossible array of spectacular life forms to enjoy.
On Tortola in the British Virgin Islands climbing Sage Mountain and standing in the shade of grand mahogany trees while taking in a platinum view of an expansive archipelago of small islands is a peak life experience. Each island encloses perfect crescent-shaped beaches filled with fine sand, textured by assorted birds and sea life scampering across their pristine surfaces.
In Grand Cayman powerboats take visitors out to a submerged sand bar, about five feet below the surface. There one can don diving gear, even free dive, to cavort in company with a large colony of sting rays. Solitary by nature, this is the only location known where these splendid creatures socialize and keep company with each other. Certainly, there are few locations on earth where humans can interact with them.
Off beaches at St Croix, scuba tanks allow amateur explorers to visit the eastern-most park in the American National Park System. Buck Island Reef affords views of some of the most glorious of salt water life, framed in magnificent reefs. Aerial images of these shallow reefs are stunning beyond articulation.
At Roatan in Honduras divers can visit the St. Peter’s Basilica of the diving world. Clarity of aquamarine waters is stunning, allowing unencumbered viewing of schools of impossibility, creatures more colorful than creative tee-shirts just silk-screened in kiosks on nearby beaches. Brain coral adds curious dissonance to one’s experience of this sublime eco-system. Eventually one has to come up for air and rely on indelible images printed into one’s memory.
Recently, very different images of Caribbean paradise have been emerging, ominous images of reckless destruction and catastrophic ruin of some of the grandest places on earth. Because of our reckless addiction to fossil fuels, to our gas guzzling Armadas, Hummers, Expeditions, and Explorers, some of our great joys in life are at imminent risk of being lost. Unbounded craving of America for fossil fuel has pushed demand for crude oil and its extraction to new levels. In the frenzy to bring production quotas to ever higher levels, offshore drilling has resulted in catastrophic accidents and environmental fouling.
Most ‘celebrated’ of these events was grounding of the Exxon Valdez in 1989, in which 10.8 million gallons of viscous crude oil were discharged into Prince Edward Sound, fouling 1,300 square miles of ocean. It was often reported the captain of this oil tanker was drunk and left his bridge in the hands of others who had not received required time off from duty before assuming twelve-hour shifts.
In 1998 Transocean Industries ordered construction of a deep water drilling rig with capability of drilling oil wells 30,000 feet. The Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible rig was put in service in 2001 and leased to British Petroleum until 2013. In September 2009 this rig reached a depth of 32,055 feet in the Tiber oilfield, yielding the deepest oil and gas well ever tapped in any oilfield.
On April 20th, the rig was being used to cement casing into a deep well forty one miles southeast of the Louisiana delta. A violent explosion killed eleven workers, injured others, and set the rig on fire. It burned and sank to the ocean floor a mile below, coming to rest about 1,400 feet from the wellhead. In ten days, by some estimates, more oil was released by the ruptured well than by the Valdez. The well is estimated to be releasing 200,000 gallons of crude oil per day, perhaps far more. More ominously, some observers say collapse of the well casing could make control of the gusher impossible. BP states a worst case scenario includes 6.8 million gallons a day flowing from an uncontrolled blow-out.
Others suggest the entire gulf coast shoreline and its ecosystems could be lost. True economic, environmental, and aesthetic costs are matters of speculation. Potential consequences of this blow-out may soon dwarf any other natural disaster in American experience. We have in a week’s time become a nation of environmental voyeurs. Fishermen and individuals who depend on the Gulf of Mexico for their livelihoods are soon to be economic casualties. Those dependent on tourism may experience the true environmental cost of doing business in ways unfathomed. This blowout is at one end of the Gulf Stream. If the oil slick gets into the Gulf Stream, the fouling destruction could take out East Florida beaches and move further north. As one perceptive fisherman in Louisiana said, “This is worse than an atomic bomb.” Realtors are saying out loud this may not be a good time to own coastal property.
The greatest fear in the oil industry is an uncontrolled blow-out. In days ahead we will all become expert at why this is a justified fear. Perhaps just as deadly is our uncontrolled appetite for everything from plastic plates and cups we throw away at parties to the billions of plastic water bottles we discard each year; to our cars; all made from crude oil. British Petroleum and Transocean are only doing what we ask them to do – give us the raw materials for the stuff we throw away in abundance.
In Greek mythology Pandora opened her jar, releasing all manner of evil upon mankind. The only thing remaining inside when she got the lid back on was Hope. The dense viscous oil released by Deepwater Horizon is considered the most problematic form of oil to be released from a blown-out well. Have our consumer appetites opened a jar that contains the harsh stuff of reality, not the safe musings of ancient writings? Do we have the right to force other creatures of our world to make the ultimate sacrifice? Is there hope remaining that we might become wiser in our reckless ways?
Members of my former church have a real problem with my efforts to recycle those very plastics made from the same form of crude spewing out of the ocean floor off Louisiana. Two days after the Deepwater Horizon blow-out I asked members of my prayer group to leave their plastic cups and plates on the table for recycling, as I always do. I had to fish them out of the trash cans, as I always do. I can only hope my environmental eccentricities which ‘freak out’ people will become main stream – for the life of all of us.
“Father, forgive them they know not what they do.”
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