Julie Dermansky's One Year Remembrance Album

dead sea turtle painted red at sunset

Friday April 15th, 2011 Waveland, MS

Dead sea turtle on the beach in Waveland Mississippi,  painted red by the Institute for the Marine Mammal Studies so it wont be counted a second time, left on the beach until a crew comes to remove it. 

An unprecedented number of dead young  Kemp's Ridley and Loggerhead  sea turtles have washed up on the shores of Mississippi along the Gulf of Mexico starting almost a year after the BP oil spill. 

Test are being done on the high number of turtle and dolphin corpses found on the beaches but results have not been released. ~ Julie Dermansky

I got Julie Dermansky's Newletter this afternoon when I was sitting in the pediatrician's office with my son. It's really hot in Miami these days and I was drinking a too-sweet Sprite in one of those weird-shade-of-green plastic soda bottles that's made from petroleum. (For a refresher on what we make from petroleum, revisit this post. We might have one like it on things made from corn soon, btw.) Anyway, I opened her email on my little iPad and felt ill, sad and small. About an hour before, I'd just posted my Memo blog post below, saying I'd never forget Deepwater Horizon. But Julie's photos, her most recent blog post, and her recent additions to her Flickr photostream show that sadly, the ones who are not forgetting the most are the animals. And not just marine animals, either. Poisoned water works its way inland. Even terrestrial animals can't forget, if you look at that poor little armadillo in her flicker stream. 


I couldn't finish my soda. I looked at the bottle and all I could think was what price...? What is the real price of this plastic?


So much beauty has been lost to us with BP's Deepwater Horizon spill. Julie relentlessly documents it all. I am proud to help disseminate her work.

dead bird with blue feathers

Saturday April 16- Gulfport Mississippi

All images, and text captions, in this post: © Julie Dermansky, All Rights Reserved, Used With Permission

You can follow Julie's work at The Atlantic. She was in Egypt at Tahir Square in February. She also currently has an exhibit in New Orleans, at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art featuring her work after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. You can see much more of her work at jsdart.com.

Post text © Bright Nepenthe, 2011