By Amanda Nalley • DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER • May 3, 2010
“We kind of feel helpless because you know you can’t do anything about the oil spill,” Trey Head said.
The cleanup effort, sponsored by Volunteer Florida, was an effort to rid the beaches of trash, which in turn makes oil cleanup easier, said Paul Johnson, president of Reef Relief, a global nonprofit dedicated to protecting coral reefs. About 90 people participated. At Shell Point, volunteers estimated they removed 50 to 60 pounds of trash from the beach.
The state’s fishing industry is already beginning to suffer because of the spill. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Sunday shut down commercial and recreational fishing from Louisiana to parts of the Florida Panhandle, saying the closure would last for at least 10 days.
Florida is not expected to be impacted by the spill through Wednesday. If it does make a presence on Wakulla’s beaches, the Heads of Tallahassee plan on helping out again.
“I can’t see any reason not to help,” Cory Head said. “We love this area.”
The state is developing and training volunteers to help with oil cleanup and BP, which operated the targeted rig, is also seeking volunteers.
The most recent estimation is that the spill is dumping 210,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf each day but some estimate it could be dumping more.
Florida State University oceanography professor Ian MacDonald said according to his method of estimation, which measures the amount of oil on the surface of the water versus the Coast Guard’s estimation of oil flowing directly from the leak, there were 9 million gallons of oil on the surface as of April 28, a number quite higher than the 1.6 million gallons estimated by the Coast Guard.
“It comes down to how we should do this,” MacDonald said. “If one method gives you an answer five times greater than the other method, then you have to say one of these methods is wrong.”
Closer to home, emergency management staffs at Wakulla and Franklin counties and managers at the State Emergency Response Team continue to monitor the situation.
“Right now there is a lot of uncertainty of where this thing is going to go,” said Wakulla County Emergency Management Director Scott Nelson. “We are doing all that we can.”
A state of emergency was declared for Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay and Gulf counties by Gov. Charlie Crist on Friday.
BP deployed 74,900 feet of boom near Pensacola with an additional 18,000 feet deployed Sunday.
As the massive spill spread through the Gulf of Mexico, some experts feared currents could pull it down around the Florida Keys and up the East Coast. If that happens, the scope of the disaster could grow exponentially, affecting not only the gulf states but portions of the Eastern Seaboard and all of southeast Florida where the Gulf Stream runs fairly close to shore.
“This may have potentially disastrous effects especially on the beaches and the reefs,” said Hans Graber, executive director of the University of Miami’s Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing. “With weather conditions deteriorating that makes it very difficult to contain.”