Snapshots of the Oil Spill

It's Day 80 and BP says, and the government agrees, that they are working so very haaaaarrrrrd. In the same breath, the LA Times reports that the Obama administration is asking BP if they can't try haaaaaaaarrrrrrrderrrrrrrrrr.

Meanwhile it's business as usual in the Gulf spill. Oil gushes at the rate of 60,000 barrels a day, animals swim in it, ingest it, get coated in it and die, often agonizingly. People watch their businesses die. You get get all nostalgic and think about an entire way of life dying. I keep hearing from people that there is a distinctive smell to the area. Between the burning of the oil and the smell of death, I can't imagine it. Meanwhile, the Obama administration struggles to regain its moratorium on offshore drilling. It's hard when Big Business, specifically Big Oil has so much power, isn't it Barack? I'd make a whole bunch of cynical commentary about the judiciary and ineffectual prosecution of US Government positions but I'm just too disgusted.

Anyway, on to the subject of the least vocal victims... The ones we humans were to be shepherds of, to safeguard and to share our planet with. Yeah, them... Julie Dermansky continues her efforts to document them in painful detail, observing large and small. She captures even the tiniest victims of the spill. When your house is covered with oil, inevitably you are too...

hermit crab in oil sheen © Julie Dermansky, www.jsdart.com, Used with permission

Hermit crab covered in oil on the shore of Grand Terre Island in Barataria Bay from BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil from the BP uncapped well in the Gulf of Mexico made its way into Barataria Bay and the coast from Louisiana to Florida.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010, except figure caption text.