More than a little Spat

I haven't quite been able to figure out exactly why this BP oil spill mess keeps gnawing at me? I mean beyond the fact that you would have to be working with half a brain not to outraged at the reason, historic and current, blind energy greed, that have us in this position. But more than that I think its my childhood love for the sea. I grew up thinking and planning to be a marine biologist. I shuffled off to university with wet feet and a salty freshening breeze blowing on shore. I learned to scuba dive before I could drive, and the first place I drove, literally, was to the beach with the back of my little Datsun pickup (mini by today's standards) stuffed with diving gear. The first photo job I applied for was on the Calypso with Jacques Cousteau (okay, I was really naive.) So as the Jimmy Buffet song goes, "the sea's in my veins," and there it remains.

As I read reports and news releases, call folks on the Gulf to set up interviews, and work through the last details with National Audubon Society and prepare to start documenting in the Gulf with their interests (Important Bird Areas) in mind, its all those years of walking beaches and face-mask pointed into the sea that makes this assignment hit closer to soul's home.

Marine biologists will admit that not a great deal is known about the effects of oil on organisms in deep water.

"We know almost nothing about the ecology in the deep ocean," says Professor Ed Overton, an environmental scientist at Louisiana State University from a recent interview with BBC.

That comment comes as the Obama Administration once again filed a stop order on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. At the same time oyster fishermen (harvesters really) are coming to grips with the reality of their crops life cycle; oil and the toxic soup associated with it are not only polluting the beaches and mangroves, but plunging a dipstick deep into the future of all marine life in the wake of this disaster. In their case they have more than a little spat with BP and other oil companies that are responsible for this disaster. In fact, spat is at the very core of their future. Spat are baby oysters, and now is the time along the Gulf coast when they head off to become the encrusting bivalves nature intended. And nature's job for them - filter the sea.

The April 10th BP/Deepwater Horizon spill has carried on just long enough to spell spat doom. Late June the waters warm and trigger oyster spawning, about a 100 million eggs per female. After mid-water fertilization the infant bivalve wannabees attach to something hard, like another oyster, and start their quiet sedentary lives of inner contemplation - they are called spat, about the size of a big pinhead. Spat kindergarten through high school takes about three years, so if you are in the oyster harvesting business your crop is always three to four years in the making.

I wouldn't know so much, or care, about oysters other than they were a part of my summers and winters as a teenager growing up near Puget Sound, Washington. A friend's family owned oyster beds and forever needed a hand, and I needed the money. Lowtide, razor sharp oyster shells and the rich alive smell of the estuarine flats was better than flipp'n burgers.

And there's a culture to work drawn from the sea. Everything around it has a culture. A taste of that culture can be felt on trawlers, and shrimpboats, and village around the world. It extends into all the lives connected to the sea. Along the Gulf coast that means oysters as much as anything. A recent article in the Nola.com from New Orleans reflects the downstream impact of the oyster loss -

Gulf oil spill puts oyster shuckers, traditions on ice

Working those beaches taught me a valuable lesson, later reinforced formally at university, if you are an oyster you can not run, you can not hide, you are on the inside, what you take from the outside. In the Gulf that outside is a toxic world beyond what the past 200 million years has prepared the oyster for, and it is becoming clear it will be that way for years to come.

Photo courtesy: Mary Campbell/GLOBIO

UN-embedded Journalism

Excellent piece of UN-embedded journalism by Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone - worth the read!

The Spill, The Scandal and the President

The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world's most dangerous oil company get away with murder

From the article:

Even worse, the "moratorium" on drilling announced by the president does little to prevent future disasters. The ban halts exploratory drilling at only 33 deepwater operations, shutting down less than one percent of the total wells in the Gulf. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the Cabinet-level official appointed by Obama to rein in the oil industry, boasts that "the moratorium is not a moratorium that will affect production" – which continues at 5,106 wells in the Gulf, including 591 in deep water.

Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world's largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to "catastrophic" errors. In a May 19th letter to Salazar, 26 congressmen called for the rig to be shut down immediately. "We are very concerned," they wrote, "that the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon could foreshadow an accident at BP Atlantis."

Photo courtesy of al.com

Embedded... in oil... and much more

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”
- the Beatles

Over the past few weeks I have embedded far more information about the Gulf ecosystem and the mismanagement of natural resources into my brain than I really care to know. "Embedded" is a word that has been troubling me for about 10 years, since it was first applied to the other Gulf war, that other oil mess, and the feeling continues to churn in my gut, like one of the parasites I once picked up in the Congo. This one just won't go away. My saying then was "better living through chemistry", this time that joke's punch line has a petrochemical stench to it.

"Embedded" was initially used in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The US military reacted to pressure from news media who were growing frustrated by the level of access granted by the Bush (Sr.) Administration during the 1991 Gulf War and in the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (Bush Jr). Lt. Col. Rick Long, the former head of media relations for the U.S. Marine Corps, managed the media boot camp in Quantico, Virginia, which prepared journalists for their war assignments. "Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment." Embedding journalists honorably served that end, said Long. BP, and in a complicit act, the US Coast Guard, are now going to attempt to dominate the information environment". Only the environment keeps growing (see map below).

As I have struggled with the "go" vs "not go" to the Gulf issue these past couple weeks, one of the issues that weighed significant in the "not go" column has been "embedded" media. It feels a bit like my friend who was unceremoniously ushered off the Nike corporate campus because he was inadvertently wearing another companies footwear, shoes that better fit his feet and wallet. If you are at Nike you better have your feet embedded in their shoes. It's hard to imagine anyone embedded in the BP media caravan and not wearing BP sneakers.

It is possible to sneak around in other shoes, sometimes, some places, but in my own country?

Amr Al-Mounaiery, Abu Dhabi TV correspondent: "After this war [Gulf 2003], I realized that we in the media are the soldiers of politics. Not the military soldiers. I am proud that Abu Dhabi TV showed all sides, everything. You can see CNN showed only part of the war – their favorite part. They didn't show any of the anti-American rallies or the civilian casualties. They just showed crowds welcoming American soldiers and clapping hands. It is selective journalism – like Saddam did ... This was the Arabic way. Now we are switching roads and we wonder: Where is America? Where is the American dream? Freedom of expression, where is that?"
– Excerpt from "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq – an oral history" by Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson

"Embedded" should never be linked to journalism, journalists, media or integrity of reporting. I have a great deal of respect for many correspondents who have worked the front lines of the painful and ugly stories, both wars of politics and environment, but I am also disheartened by our lack of Murrow-ism. Our lack of courage to demand more of the words and images we create.

"For birds, the timing could not be worse; they are breeding, nesting and especially vulnerable in many of the places where the oil could come ashore," warns Melanie Driscoll, a Louisiana-based bird conservation director with the National Audubon Society. Embedded means limiting, controlling the look and distribution of images that painfully picture pollution-soaked pelicans and other life - images that are powerful emotional arguments for getting off our oil addiction. Yes, it's still possible for a picture to say a thousand words (above), unless it's embedded, controlled and marketed, then it's only 500 words at best.

Speaking of numbers, here are a few, embedded in this environmental disaster. I'm not a numbers guy, but these are numbers basic to primary school math.

• Since the initial inky plume began spreading up and under the Gulf of Mexico, the price of oil per barrel has risen by $2.5 U.S. dollars a barrel. BP generated $4 million a day before the crisis, that figure has now risen to $10 million per day.
  
• When the accident first occurred the BP estimate was 1,000 gallons flow, then upped to 5,000 (which the US government trumpeted), then 10,000 was finally settled on after 5 weeks. Post several botched attempts to stop the spewing crude, a capture siphon was reported by BP to be collecting 11,000 gallons/day... okay, my math is starting to fail me here, but isn't that 110% ? hey why not, coaches ask that of their athletes, BP of their employees, why not their well heads? (That actually make good math, if a company can get 110% of the oil out by spilling it, that's more efficient and more profitable.) But let's continue... the cutting of the pipe was, BP reported, going to expand the output by 20%, and then they (BP) announced some success as they are capturing up to 50% of the escaping oil. So, does that mean 11,000 = 50% so there is 22,000 being released, which would be 20% increase over the original which would need to be about 18,000? Hang on, I'm almost done with this story problem.
  
  Now, as of June 16, nearly 2 months after this started the Government scientists today increased the estimate of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico to be upwards of 60,000 barrels per day. That translates into 2.5 million gallons per day; an amount equal to the Exxon Valdez spill could be gushing from the well about every four days.
• Okay, so is the BP capture 50% = 11,000 or is it 50% = 60,000/2 = 30,000? which = 50% of 600% more than they said? At what point do the numbers, or men behind them, lie?
• A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration video, shot as officials coordinated response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, shows that federal officials almost immediately worried that the oil well could leak up to 110,000 barrels per day, or 4.6 million gallons.
• $20 billion vs $27.7 billion cash - the first is amount the US Gov. pressed BP to set in escrow for partial clean up ($1 billion spent currently) - the second BP's cash generation in 2009.
  
  A couple more bullet points -
  
• New polling suggests 76 percent of Americans support some government limitations on greenhouse-gas emissions - yet, 53% believe off-shore drilling should go forward. (The Senate recently rejected a backward-looking resolution to discredit the EPA from Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski. “It shows that senators are now scared of being tied to fossil-fuel interests,” says Michael Levi, a climate expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. No numbers yet on percentage of those senators currently vs previously embedded in the pockets of major oil companies.)
• 2 cents - A tripling of the federal government’s expenditures on energy technology R.D. & D. could be financed with a increase of about 2 cents per gallon in the federal tax on gasoline. (more on this)
  

I'm a picture person - I've embedded a little map to bring this ugly mess closer to home - your home - just click on the tabs at the top of the map and move it to your home - or any other place you love.

James Carville, a Clinton campaign veteran who has criticized the administration's response to the spill, said, “We don’t need legislation, we need to utterly reject the philosophy that companies and markets are able to regulate themselves,” continuing, “Until you have that you’re going to have banking crises and environmental catastrophes.” Along with that I would also "utterly reject" the philosophy that as long as journalists (photogs included) are embedded in their subjects we will never hear and see what is and isn't being regulated and by whom.

So, "embedded", what has it come to mean? It feels a lot like a lie, or worse yet a partial truth. The kind that confuses our confidence and erodes our integrity. We have now for a decade embedded those few among us charged and challenged with reporting the facts, unbiasedly, in war and disaster - at the same time we have now been engaged in the longest war in American history and the country's largest environmental disaster. Something, maybe that "feeling continues to churn in my gut" sensation, tells me the two are embedded in one another.

other thoughts: Pros and Cons of Embedded Journalism

Photo above: A laughing gull mired in oil from the Deepwater Horizon on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)