http://www.pnj.com/article/20100624/NEWS01/6240324/Dolphin-washes-ashore-dies-in-rescue
KAYCEE LAGARDE AND BILL VILONA * KLAGARDE@PNJ.COM BVILONA@PNJ.COM * JUNE 24, 2010
Christy Travis first saw oil splotched along the beach as she approached the surf at Fort Pickens. Then she turned and saw a bottlenose dolphin in distress in shallow water.
“It was heartbreaking. Everyone was crying,” said Travis, 41, who was visiting with her family from Arkansas when they discovered the dolphin and joined with others in attempt to save it.
“We had oil all over us,” she said.
The dolphin died while enroute to Gulf World Marine Park, a rescue facility in Panama City.
Once the dolphin was discovered, a three-hour ordeal ensued to try and save it in the water. Two U.S. Coast Guard volunteers and a Florida Department of Environmental Protection officer were involved in the rescue attempt.
Travis said people scraped oil off the dolphin with their hands.
“It was so sad. It just broke our hearts,” Travis said.
A necropsy will be performed to determine the exact cause of death, according to Courtnee Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the Unified Command in Mobile.
Brian Sibley, another United Command spokesman, confirmed the dolphin “had some oil on it.” But he said he wasn’t sure if that was the reason the dolphin beached itself.
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http://www.pnj.com/article/20100624/NEWS01/6240322/Oil-blackens-Pensacola-beach
Pensacola News Journal
Oil blackens Pensacola beach
BP’s mess closes stretch of Gulf to swimmers
JAMIE PAGE * JEPAGE@PNJ.COM * JUNE 24, 2010
For the first time since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill 65 days ago, emulsified oil in large patches stained the sugar-white sand on Pensacola Beach. Large numbers of tar balls continued to roll ashore.
A section of the Gulf along Pensacola Beach – but not the beach itself – was closed to swimming and wading after a health advisory was issued by the Escambia County Health Department.
Skimmer boats removed big mats of brown mousse that entered Pensacola Pass. And mousse also was seen along a three-mile stretch from Pensacola Beach Gulf Fishing Pier to the Fort Pickens gate ranger station.
“It is some nasty stuff out there,” Escambia Sheriff David Morgan said after an afternoon helicopter flyover.
“Escambia got a nice mousse-laying today for plus-or-minus six miles,” Florida Environmental Secretary Mike Sole said. “I’ve been saying all along we’d be getting tar balls. I was hoping to not see the mousse, but that’s what we got. Now the issue is how fast we get that off the beach. We need to up the response.”
On Tuesday night, beach cleanup workers hand-collected roughly 8 tons of tar balls from Johnson Beach on Perdido Key, according to a report by the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
“We have seen it stain the sand in small bits before but not as much as today,” said Keith Wilkins, the county’s deputy chief of the Neighborhood and Community Services Bureau.
“The tar balls were even more widespread today. I am not expecting it to slack off for another couple of days.”
The latest weather projections are likely to continue to push these impacts ashore along much of the Gulf front on Pensacola Beach.
The Gulf closure is from Park West at the Fort Pickens Gate recreation area through beach walkover No. 23, slightly west of Portofino.
The water in that area is closed until further notice. Double red flags posted on the beach mean civil citations can be issued by deputies to anyone disobeying lifeguards’ orders to stay out of the water.
Swimming and wading is still allowed in the Gulf east of walkover 23, and in the sound side, Health Department spokeswoman Molly Payne-Hardin said.
County Commission Chairman Grover Robinson IV said the immediate cleanup of oil and tar balls was hindered by bureaucratic red tape.
County officials were unable to take their usual helicopter tour of the Gulf on Wednesday morning because of unfavorable weather conditions. When county oil monitors noticed the significant impacts to Pensacola Beach later in the morning, county officials asked BP to send out beach cleanup equipment, such as sand sifter rakes that remove tar balls.
Robinson said county staff was told that BP would first have to get written approval from Unified Command in Mobile before it could send beach cleaning equipment for the National Seashore area. So, the county asked that equipment be sent for other areas of Pensacola Beach that are not part of the National Seashore.
But no equipment arrived.
“It was ridiculous,” Robinson said. “They had promised this wasn’t going to happen and that they would be right there with us. We were supposed to have the flexibility to say if we need something, get out here.”
BP spokeswoman Liz Castro said the reason the rakes were not sent was because they would have created much worse environmental damage by spreading the oil.
“With the consistency of the oil today, combined with the heat of the day, the beach rakes would have created a hazmat situation,” Castro said. “It was pretty bad today. We are using the manual workers right now because it is the most environmentally safe way to do it.”
Roughly 945 cleanup workers were working on beaches in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties during the day Wednesday, while 220 were on the night shift, Castro said. The rakes also are used at night and during the cooler early morning hours.
Dragging rakes on the beach when the tar balls are hot, smears the oil into the sand and makes it harder to clean up, Wilkins said.
Skimmer boats were working in Pensacola Pass, Perdido Pass, and offshore in the Gulf to deal with the heavy oil coming in, Wilkins said.
Escambia officials said that Coast Guard Rear Adm. James Watson – who is running operations for the full Unified Command effort – was responsive Wednesday and got the heavy equipment like front-loaders and road graders needed to quickly move a lot of sand on site at Pensacola Beach.
Special thanks to Richard Charter