bayou lore

Offshore for multiple days, insomnia is no longer an issue. I sleep deep and dream wild, awake unsure of truth or fiction. Is that an actual development, a new predicament? A real woman I met on vacation? By the time the coffee pot is full and fresh, consciousness returns and illusions fade. I assume the watch at 0600, we're standing by on location, a dense field 20 miles due south of Grand Isle, La., where tar balls made their first landfall during this summer's BP oil spew.

Production platforms may stand alone but usually appear in packs all along the Gulf coast, mostly inside the 10-fathom curve and atop the continental shelf. A 3-mile radar scan can produce hundreds of dots, mostly random and haphazard, sometimes in geometrically recognizable patterns. The most populous fields, the ones closest to Belle Pass and Port Fourchon, have names, Bay Marchan, the Rabbit Field--I can't be sure from where that name hails. I've been told the perplexing mass used to look like a rabbit on the radar screen, although today so many platforms and satellites exist in the few square miles that identifying a rabbit is like picking an item from an ink blot, a face from a cloud. Perhaps it's origin is a simile, platforms reproducing in hordes, replicating like rabbits.

A gap between the two massive fields, a thoroughfare for boat traffic, is known colloquially as "the hole in the wall". In the daytime it's an innocuous setting for navigation. At night or in restricted visibility, it's a danger zone, nearly impossible to distinguish the fixed from the moving, another vessel underway. We have an AIS to alert us to the position of other boats, but only if they have an AIS, too, and unfortunately, it's not required. Some advanced radars are capable of distinguishing fixed targets from moving, but only after a 6-minute interval of data has been collected and only provided your vessel doesn't change course--in other words, still useless.

We're offshore to transport a construction crew of a dozen men as they work their way through the field repairing aging structures, sandblasting and painting and welding new handrails. I see land only once in 10 days. The Apache Energy Corp. has been fined $10,000 by MMS for the condition of a platform, but that's less than the daily budget for this construction crew, which I'm told is 12 grand. We mostly stand-by watching thunderstorms and water spouts, rainbows and lightning. The platforms are mostly un-manned and the crew uses rope swings to get from the boat to the landings, a bit unnerving in choppy seas.

We arrive at GI 47H just in time for a passing storm, water pellets emerging from gray. The crew wants to wait it out. They come to the bridge to check the radar, observe the weather, a vacant horizon. We listen to local news, the anniversary of Katrina, reflections and recollections. Rain stills the sea and removes white caps, a sea turtle drifts by, the first I've seen in some time, droplets like pin pricks onto the skin of the sea. It doesn't take long before the guys pipe in with reminiscence and story-telling ensues. The company man says they lost 16 platforms during Katrina, just in the Grand Isle area. His first post-hurricane excursion via helicopter led to a set of coordinates and to an empty patch of sea. Another worker shares a tale of inspecting a platform when a tremendous impact shook the structure. "We was lookin' over the side for the boat that hit us, but there wudn't one." He says a dive team told them later that another platform had rolled into the base of the one they were on.

It's like any unforgettable development, a spell of heightened awareness, a blend of anxiety and adrenalin. Given the right circumstances, recollections becomes nostalgic. Time at sea is good for that and other things, introspection and inspiration. Bayou lore says that Kris Kristoferson wrote "Me & Bobby McGee" on his way home from a stint offshore. Mr. Kristoferson was a helicopter pilot in the Gulf, flew for Kerr-McGee to service the oil field. Maybe it was the view from above, the expanse of sea below, the open road and satisfaction of a paycheck with the coming of vacation--instant freedom, reduced stress. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to do, he wrote. At least it is for those who grasp it, for those who find clarity in motion, the pilot or mariner, the cowboy or indian on a horse, at harmony with the spinning axis, spatial limitations overcome by psychology, sense of wonder, the realization of freedom.

insomnia, the oil sands

Another advantage of life at sea is time off, vacation, weeks of it at once, here on terra firma where surroundings sometimes spin when sitting still, although I know I'm not moving and haven't been drinking. And while the mind adapts and synapses reconcile, I remain confined to earthly predicaments, the same daily shit as everyone else, but I'm free at least to address entirety at my own pace, if not my own terms. I'm in possession of free will.

Yet a long haul on the night watch will sabotage circadian rhythms and deal you insomnia, wake you at 2 am. I've never been a night owl, prefer to wake with the sun, to bed under stars, leave twilight to the vampires and deviants. But there is an odd clarity to the afterlight, an enhanced consciousness, a visceral calm. There is amplified hearing, the slight sounds of insects and distant traffic, the creaking of old wood. Still for long enough, I crank the radio and clean house, purge closets and rearrange.

There's tons of energy talk on all the news outlets these days, and I listen to a report on the Alberta Oil Sands, where a mixture of sand, clay and a dense and viscous petroleum occurs naturally, and then is rather unnaturally expunged by huge machines. Early man reportedly used the mixture, called bitumen, for water-proofing and on stone tools as lubrication. Today, bitumen is blasted by hot-water canons and "upgraded" to produce a synthetic oil, which will eventually burn and release its carbon. To heat the water, producers burn natural gas, a relatively clean fuel. The entire process, given the eventual combustion of the oil, emits up to 45% more greenhouse gases than conventional oil drilling. Roughly half the oil produced in Canada, America's largest supplier, comes from the manipulation of butiminous sands. Surely, not the answer to our energy needs. Somewhat like growing corn to make ethanol, robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's hardly technology.

I mop floors and dust baseboards, eventually sit--and for a split second, everything spins. I'm reminded again of the great 921 earthquake in Taiwan, when the ground shook for a full week, more than 11 hundred aftershocks following a 7.6. I could put a glass of water on the coffee table in my fourth-story apartment, and it would never settle, a constant ripple, the earth moving every three or four seconds. It was like getting sea legs, and much like tonight, a bout of insomnia. I hear the first chirps of birds, open blinds to a lavender dawn, a sunrise obscured by neighborhood trees and houses.

bloody mary

Returning from even a few days at sea, it's not pleasant to find lots of telephone messages, that type of thing only reminds the mind of things unattended, removes focus from the task at hand, making it through another watch, another hitch, getting the boat from the Mississippi and through Venice Jump, Tiger Pass, and then into slip one, two or three knots of current astern. Part of the attraction to life on a boat is a postponement of exterior, excess stimuli, concentration on survival and a focus on the immediate, not making a mistake with the boat, or god forbid, getting someone hurt.

I make it back to the dock for the final time this hitch. I know I'm good for midnight crew change, money in the bank, will get a ride to the Satchmo Airport and be on the east coast by noon tomorrow. I've got multiple friends who wanna know about media reports that 75% of the ruptured oil is gone, eaten by bacteria, evaporated by sunbeams. It seems absurd to me, not just the estimate, but that a figure is published and dispersed to the masses, the only people having a possible clue, a still-wild guess, being obscure scientists, the type who don't get quoted. Nobody at NOAA or anywhere in our government has any clue how much oil went into the Gulf, is still in the Gulf--and therefore--how much is gone.

I pick up a morning paper in the airport, the Times-Picayune, review a map furnished by NOAA that shows boundaries of fisheries still closed by the Federal Government. Ridiculous. I've seen dozens of boats fishing those waters in the past weeks, even talked to one on VHF. It says NOAA is opening an area of the Florida Panhandle this weekend, will open more soon, further west. It says they'll open waters reaching 30 days oil-free. It will all be a failure of history. The moratorium is still being pushed by the current administration, although oddly enough it's been overturned by a local judge. But the Federal/State argument, the legal wrangling makes no difference because the drilling companies have basically agreed to suspended deep-water operations, although they are still free legally to continue drilling. They would have difficulty with certain permits, but it's the uncertainty, the gray area itself that keeps them from doing it. They're going to bide their time until a day in November, when Obama has agreed to let them continue.

Bumped to first class, a frequent flyer, a bloody mary at 0700. From the window of the plane, the carvings of man, the rare, unspoilt woods, the great oceans our sponges--the greatest trash bins we've got, all of it filtered by a brownish troposphere, the exhaust of the modern world, a perpetuating haze that's the essence of who we are, a tribute to our successes, a dark reminder, an eventual death. It's the gist of consumer culture, the economy, it's everything, most of us have our hands in it, every one of us has--or wants--some material, potentially meaningless piece of crap, a device containing plastic perhaps, or even intellectual property, a machine to get us around. But it's a guarantee, a slam-dunk that that device is somehow related to the burning of fossil fuels, to oil, to a conspicuous consumption, a diversion from mortality. I once read a quote from historian and social anthropologist John Collier, a scholarly white man who lived among the Native Americans in the 1920s and 30s. He said of their spirit, "Could we make it our own, there would be an eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace." Well, who really wants to live that way, anyway? An incredible minority... another bloody mary.

fear and fascination

Back in Venice Sunday afternoon, word spreads along the docks that the moratorium has lifted. I check on-line but find no corroboration, but the vibe in Venice is upbeat and somebody must know something. It's the next step, a logical progression for the return to normalcy. We're to run a crew change during the night to Visca Knoll, due south of Mobile, taking a dozen guys to an offshore construction site where they'll spend the next two weeks working hard to kill time. I watch from the bridge as they arrive through the night, dropped off by wives or girlfriends; one car has tired-looking kids in the back seat, but they hug their dad and wave from the window pulling away. It's midnight.

We're to leave the dock at 0400, but until then, I'm left alone with study materials, still working to upgrade my license, to pass a written test in navigational competence. The discipline of navigation, like that of any science, is a considerable compilation, a mountain of miscellany amassed over millennia, an accumulation both linked and unlinked, methodical and erratic, one that's consumed heaps of resources, spent millions of lives and deaths each lived to the utmost and pushed to the extreme, both blessed and cursed by fear and fascination, terror and bliss.

Underway and offshore, fish and shrimp boats have returned to litter the night radar screen with excessive florescence, a smattering of obstacles each claiming its right of way. I spin the wheel back and forth, dodge right and left to give them a wide-enough berth. Their catch will continue to be "nose-tested", as it has been for months. According to a fisheries spokesperson on the radio the other day, no seafood caught since the well blew has failed the nose test. It's all been safe, the whole time. Somehow, that just doesn't seem likely, but Americans continue to consume literal tons of Louisiana seafood--although perhaps unknowingly--and they're paying more for it than ever.

I check instruments and waypoints, two radars, an electronic gps plotter and depth sounder, an old-school compass and binnacle, but I know where I am. Navigation in these parts is done primarily by memory, enough recognizable platforms and coastal sea buoys to keep most vessels on course. I know now that the planet may be perfectly dissected into mathematical divisions and that visual clues exist in the cosmos to help us determine where we are, to plot a fix and a course, to help keep our ass off the beach. I've learned that the nautical mile is exactly one minute of angle along a meridian of Earth and that an azimuth applied to certain equations, formulae discovered and extracted by obsessively smart people, may be plugged into tables from the nautical almanac, and that the result will make terrifying sense. I know that it's all beautiful. By the time we reach Visca Knoll, a slither of red moon has appeared and crawled southward. It rests just above our destination.

Port Fourchon

We load after midnight, leave Venice at 0200, down river and offshore before dawn. This time we hang a right and head west toward the Texas border, bound for the Eugene Island block, the first of multiple stops that will have us crisscrossing the Gulf before day's end. It's still flat-ass calm and sometime after sunrise--for the first time in months--the water turns a beautiful blue. We're the furthest west we've been in some time, in 700 feet of water. Upon closer inspection at first location, it's still covered by a sheen, a thin, diesel-like skin, a diaphanous membrane. Tiny particles sweep by with the current, but no thick globules of orange goo. I guess that's what the Coast Guard, NOAA and BP mean by "no more oil offshore". It must be too thin to skim or burn, but it's most certainly there. Staring at it for long enough, some of the particles move against the current, then dart every which way. There are bugs on the surface.

At the end of the day, we've covered more than two hundred miles, nearly all of it veiled by the sheen. We're bound for Port Fourchon (pronounced Foo-Shon), the heart of oil field operations, the busiest port in the world in terms of boat traffic--not tonnage. Ports along the Gulf coast are largely a rag-tag affair of run-down and worn-out facilities. From Venice on the Mississippi to Port Aransas, TX, docks are eroding and collapsing, creating hazards for boat operators. I could hardly believe the condition of the docks when I first arrived. With all the money the oil field generates, it's baffling that facilities are this run-down. Apparently profits go into pockets, not upkeep. Port Aransas is the worst. It's a constant battle to place fenders, to keep jagged and rusty metal beams from tearing up the hull or random debris from getting sucked into a propeller. I've seen nicer docks in third-world countries.

But Port Fourchon is the exception, the jewel of the oil field. At the terminus of Bayou Lafourche (pronounced La-Foosh), an industrial metropolis reigns, and it's a city that never sleeps. Literally thousands of boats are loading, unloading, transiting in and out of Belle Pass at any given time. It's like rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles or Atlanta except with big boats--and no brakes. It's impossible to describe how frustrating and nerve-racking it can be to maneuver a 165-foot boat in dense traffic, the VHF radio a cacophony of transmissions all stepping on each other. But tonight, it's not so bad.

We're bound for C-Port One, a cavernous, open-air building, a modern megalith visible for 30 or 40 miles on a clear day. It contains nine slips of equal size, each fitting two crewboats or one larger supply vessel where the aft deck can be loaded or unloaded out of the rain. It's a nice facility really, the entire floor--acres and acres--all covered in brick, each slip with its own fuel and water station.

It can still be a bitch getting into the slip, depending on wind and current, and especially if it's already occupied. We're to pull into slip 5 and drifting into view, of course there's already a boat there. It's the Anna Mae, a well-run crewboat, friends of ours. The tide's flooding so I top around, crank the bow thruster, let it warm. I haven't done this in awhile, been in Venice for some time. With the slip occupied, it leaves me about two feet on either side of the boat, not much for a vessel this size. I spin the rudder to starboard and begin to bump the #1 and #4 engines into a pivot, moving slowly, tucking the port quarter just under the bow of the Anna Mae, letting the current bring our bow around. I don't need the thruster and soon we're secure. I make a head call, catch up the logs, take a sounding stick to the fuel tank. We've burned 3,500 gallons.

summer job

This morning, South Pass Floating City sends a responder speed boat to inspect the skimmer-boat operations. He finds a bunch of the fish and shrimp boats tied up in the bayou just hanging out, apparently doing nothing for those BP checks, which run several thousand dollars a day. He comes back with the names of 75 boats and they're all fired. In addition and possibly as a result, the number of Task Forces under crew boat command is reduced from five to three. The number of deepwater skimmers is also reduced, according to radio news, and reports circulate that there's not much oil left offshore.

"Dat ain't too smart, yeah." Its Clem the dispatcher with his odd cajun brogue which varies from Parish to Parish. We're huddled just aft of the wheelhouse and out of the sun while the crane slings containers and pallet material onto deck. It's the boat crew, the dock hands, passengers awaiting transportation, smoke 'em if you got 'em. Conversations typically begin with a light and center on recreational fishing, but things have been a little different this summer. "I mean, dey had a pretty good job, yeah." It's like Canadians dropping an "ay" at the end of sentences. Its peculiar to a certain area, somewhere between here and Lafayette, as far I can tell. You won't hear it in New Orleans. Alex says he has a friend on the Florida panhandle who got on with the cleanup driving his family boat. He says they sit around a lot, then cruise a bit and make deliveries. He's a college student on summer break and says he'll bank about $60,000 from BP. Not a bad take for a college kid with a summer job.

We spend the afternoon shuffling around slip one, under the crane then out of the way as cargo arrives intermittently. At one point, we get underway and into the river, downbound past West Point Light, approaching Cupid's Gap when the dispatcher calls on a company frequency and turns us around, a typical occurrence in the oil field. More stuff has arrived in Venice, back under the crane.

When they kick us off again it's late afternoon, and we make it offshore by sunset. It's flat calm, finally true summer weather in the Gulf, and we traverse the surface without lateral motion. A flat sea is another oddity, and the antonym of storm has confounded sailors since the dawn of ocean exploration. It has likewise inspired poets, a painted ship upon a painted sea, a reflective expanse endlessly visible save restrictions of luminosity and the curvature of the earth, a calculable distance, the square root of height of eye multiplied by 1.17, the answer nautical miles. "Do you see this?" Alex is at the port side windows. Sunbeams penetrate the sea to reveal an orange-brown hue, a non-particulate presence but an unnatural manifestation of color nonetheless. The sea has changed. It's only then I notice surface rippling and the lack thereof. We're in a huge sheen.

100 Days in the Gulf

It's been a hundred days in the Gulf since the Deepwater rig blew, and delta tidal flats are bared and then buried by the lunar sequence, much as they ever were. Of course, progress has left an indelible mark this time, and the ecology changes, continues to evolve. There is an issue regarding impact, one of long-term consequence. There is the matter of message, a question of what we have learned.

In southern Louisiana and along the Gulf coast, an oil spill is a shame for lots of reasons: it makes seafood inedible, kills some of the fun of a fishing trip, a day at the beach. It makes people less likely to get in their cars in the first place and drive down for summertime vacations. It also kills birds and marine life, something that flips a switch in many of us, tickling some intrinsic recess of our mind where we still strive for a balance, for a oneness with mother nature.

The years ahead will see research and debate, occasional media reports addressing environmental impact. They will also see the extraction of oil at a record pace, more next year than now, more of it to satisfy the needs of more and more men, the wants of more and more women. Wether we've reached a peak or not, we'll continue unabashed to burn oil for many moons. The skies will brown, the atmosphere sicken. There will be hotter summers and colder winters. There will be horrific storms and skin cancers. But life will adapt and find its way. Some will get trampled, others will seek higher ground.

From slip one in Tiger Pass, I see media vans and reporters--they no longer warrant much attention. I still see Greenpeace from time to time and other environmental activists. I still listen to them on "The Think Tank", Garland Robinette's local FM coverage and debate. Today one activist discusses the methods of his movement, the acceptance of minor victories. It sounds like he's signed on to one of our two big political parties, and he's got to make a pitch for his team. "Putting solar panels on every roof isn't the answer," he says. "We know that." He makes excuses for the lack of progress, he justifies political expediency.

We can blame the media, the government, the corporations. We can call it propaganda if we like, but popular belief--conventional wisdom--maintains that there is no alternative to oil. That may even be true. Solar panels are overly expensive and don't make economic sense. Windmills need costly maintenance and frequently break down. Batteries require lots of energy to produce. Nuclear energy is passe and creates an unseemly byproduct. Whatever's wrong with geothermal, I forget.

The reduction of biodiversity is a slow process, and the ultimate demise of life on the planet won't happen overnight. It's going to be a long, arduous task, a slow train to shitsville. It won't happen in 100 days, not in a thousand years. Life will exist on earth until its sucked into the sun, but that life will have to deal with the consequences of the human explosion and the quest for more.

the cleanup

With a storm bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico, large work boats involved in the cleanup again flee up river to escape threatening weather, while boats like mine, inexplicably, prepare to go offshore. Just days ago, the air stood still, and a brown cloud of burn-off was visible from Venice above the Mississippi delta. It's a cloud most commonly seen above mankind and his settlements--I used to look out of the window of airplanes back and forth to Asia, and it would alert me to land, a continent approaching. For days that phenomenon has swapped around coastal Louisiana, as oil collectors offshore burn the sea above Mississippi Canyon block 258.

At the fuel dock taking on 8,000 gallons of diesel, 12,000 in water, I notice four zodiac inflatables secured vertically to the deck of a work boat at the south end of the dock. I used to manage a fleet of Mark V's, so I slide down to inspect, wind up in conversation with a mate onboard. They've got stacks of boom and absorbent pads, so I ask him about the cleanup.

"Cleanup?" he says. "If you can call it that." He tells me the coast guard or navy guys drive the zodiacs to place or collect boom. He shows me some of the material, some of it inflatable itself up to 5 feet in diameter. "By the end of the day, they're all over the place from wind and sea." Even in calm, he says, the fierce delta current itself will push oil beyond the boom, and at slack tide, it will come from underneath, seeping up the seabed, to freshly coat the beach and marsh.

Back in slip one in Tiger Pass and under the crane in late afternoon, the old Mary Jean pulls alongside. It's Rick on deck, and he says they're looking for a place to hide, looking forward to a few days at the dock. Of course, the cleanup suspended. He gives me an update on the fish-turned-skimmer-boat operation. He says they just made a grocery run with boxes of the same stuff they carried out two days ago: frozen fries and pork chops, chips and little debbies, an abundance of condiments: ketchup, mayonnaise, tabasco.

"They don't even want half the stuff," he says. "They've got these little propane cook stoves. I see 'em tossin' fries overboard!" His voice is drowned out by two apache helicopters, national guard, probably their last run for the day. The slip's as busy as ever now, the boat parade of day-workers returning. "These fishermen are askin' me," Rick continues, "'What am I suppose da do? Make tabasco soup?'" He does a good coon-ass imitation. He pulls on a cigarette, turns into the wind. "Let it blow," he says, and I must produce a frown. "Oh," Rick notices, "you must have to go out." That is the case, and soon we'll prepare for heavy seas.

And then good news

There are kayakers in the river this morning. I don't see them but hear a warning call about it on VHF 67 for river traffic. I love kayaking, have one, but why would anyone in their right mind want to kayak the Mississippi river right now--with all this work boat traffic? The transmission launches quite a response from various boats. One captain, it must be a tug, proclaims with the cajun proclivity to pronounce certain t's as d's, "Das about da dummest thing I seen."

Below the head of passes, it's mostly marsh and pasture where cows graze on both banks, sometimes appearing on sandy beaches. Crewboats like mine are generally the fastest boats plying river waters, save the occasional small speed boat which may pass us by. We do around 25 knots going down, depending on load or commodities on board. We'll make about 19 coming up. With a planing hull, meaning the forward part of the boat climbs out of the water at top speed, we also produce the greatest wake, which is a constant concern these days and leads to lots of clutch-ahead driving at 7 knots--and to frequent bickering over the radio, a tug captain sitting idle watching workers on a barge must have little else to do than complain about someone's wake. The larger, displacement-hulled work-boats make around 12 knots and produce very little wake. The container ships and tankers produce almost no wake, although they will suck water from the banks.

Offshore, immense stretches of sea are now an emulsion of oil and water, a muckish brown and black, a sickening miasma. BP's latest effort to cap the well has left an unfettered spew at the base of Mississippi Canyon, and its no longer a creeping sheen on top, its one with the water. I see dolphins for the first time swimming in the mixture, as I'm stuck pumping water offshore to the same platform, we're here every day. We got the #3 engine fixed after the fire, but this morning we lost the #4, a ruptured water line to the turbo. It's down until we get a new pipe. Alex spots a blue crab at the surface. We're in 350 feet of water. We realize we haven't seen a school of fish in days. Its the greatest environmental disaster in the history of the land, is it? But that would be the arrival of the white man.

I can't walk the boat to starboard without the #4, and the current has completely swapped and comes at us from the east. We spent last week sterning into the elements, the easiest way; now the current is pushing me into the platform. I crank up the bow thruster and let it go. We try not to use it when guys are sleeping, but everyone's up and I wouldn't have a choice anyway being down an engine. I try to follow radio news, turn up the volume, more US soldiers dead in Afghanistan. Soon the sound bleeds into the rumble of the thruster while the current screams like we're in the river. I've got the bow thruster wide open, just to keep the boat off the platform leg. It's rattling everything, making it impossible to hear the radio, and the sun is glaring in my face. I'm starting to sweat, and it all pisses me off. I'm angry for the first time in awhile.

Soon we're done and on the way in, and then good news: someone announces on channel 16 that BP has capped the well. It's no longer flowing. Its day 86. At the head of passes--one of the widest spots along the Mississippi, there's something small in the river moving across. It must be an animal, almost mid-channel. I pull the throttles back to give it more time, and its a coyote crossing the river at a good clip. He must be eying the opposite field of cows.

incident report

Two days after getting our ass kicked offshore in a storm, we have an engine room fire. I'm not kidding. I write the following incident report and submit it to my company. It's copied verbatim...

At 14:00 we left SP89 en route to SP55, arriving at about 14:20. Alex had done an engine round during the trip and reported everything in order. Switching to the stern controls at 55, I noticed smoke around the STBD blowers. It wasn't a great deal but enough to cause concern. Alex went to investigate via the deck hatch and came out waving his arms. I pulled forward until we were downwind of the platform and shut down the engines and blowers. Alex was already inside yelling "fire" and waking the others. Alex and I then went on deck to close the blower vents. When Joseph arrived, Alex and I went below, inspected the engine room for smoke and heat and found it tolerable. We acquired the #8 and #9 extinguishers from the machinery space, hyper-ventilated briefly (skin-diving method), took a deep breath and entered the engine room. There was a good deal of smoke and a fairly small fire, maybe a foot or two of flame atop the #3. We delivered one blast of dry-chem and retreated to the machinery space, but smoke had entered when we opened the hatch, and we were forced into the galley. Joseph and Greg confirmed all blower vents were shut, although this was difficult and required a crowbar as several covers have been dented by lifts.

We made our second attack from the galley in the same manner with Joseph and Greg working the door to keep smoke out of the cabin. I believe the fire was extinguished after the second blast, although it did re-flash once, and a third extinguishing became necessary. Both dry-chems were emptied. We re-checked multiple times before resuming ventilation and eventually re-starting the engines. Subsequent inspection revealed a cracked injector tube on the #5 cylinder. That engine has been vibrating excessively for some time.

Alex and I were barely able to attack the fire from the galley and get back without taking a breath. Alex and I both inhaled some smoke and probably some dry chemical, but I don't believe it was a serious amount. I experienced a little tightness of breath last night but appear to be fine. Alex say's he's ok. An emergency air source would benefit greatly a future crew in this predicament. I know an SCBA would be over-kill for a crewboat, but I've seen small, emergency "escape" breathing units that contain just a few minutes of air. Perhaps two such units per boat would not be prohibitively expensive. If the fire or smoke had been much worse on Saturday, we would not have been able to fight it without the fixed system.

A storm at sea

photo by Joshua Adams

There is nothing quite like a storm at sea. I've scoured the globe for years, seen lots of disturbing images, lived through a great earthquake once on the Asian ring of fire. But a white sea is a unique beast, an inestimable entity which may inspire with its beauty, prompting some into acts of courage. Others it will cripple with paralyzing fear.

At least we're at the dock when I wake, shower and coffee in peace. When I'm toweling off, the chord of my necklace snaps and it drops to the deck. I pick up the Maori bone carving, a fish hook I was given in New Zealand in 2000. It keeps me safe at sea. I examine it for a breath, and its fully intact but aging, turning yellow and beginning to pockmark, its edges nearly translucent. I drop it in my breast pocket and head to the bridge.

Morning news debates a moratorium on deep-water drilling. The Obama administration is asking a federal judge in Louisiana to reinstate the ban. You won't find someone around here, a local at least, who thinks that's a good idea. To the common man, its a simple matter of jobs, and businesses have evolved to service the market for deep-water drilling. People here call for a moratorium on BP--why punish other companies with good safety records who seem extremely unlikely to allow a blowout in the first place, let alone after what has transpired? These people have a point. The Deepwater rig explosion wasn't a mechanical failure or even a freak accident. It was a year-long drama of bad decisions by a rogue company.

The dock crane drops a small basket on us, and two passengers arrive. The dispatcher boards with them, and a huddle forms on deck. "They're 'shut in' at the rig, cap. They need these tools." Our potential passengers look grim. "I know it's gonna be rough, but they're askin' ya to give it a shot." A long run would be out of the question, but its only 7 miles beyond the river to location; its a tolerable amount of heavy sea.

Nearing the jetties at the tip of the Mississippi, a SE wind sends waves hurdling rocks and reaching the channel. We round the bend and head east toward an unseen sunrise, taking the sea on the starboard bow, turning right toward the biggest waves to keep the boat from pitching side to side. We're about a mile from the platform when the next swell is a monster; I'm looking up from the window. I pull the throttles back, hear an "Oh shit" from Alex, brace myself and boom! When the whiteout clears our anchor sits askew on the bow, its been dislodged from its aluminum housing. The next swell and it's airborne. For a split second I envision it coming through the bridge windows--I should hit the deck, but before I can react, we roll to starboard and another awful sound. Alex is at the port window glaring down. I leap left to look, and the anchor's between the house and bulwarks. It needs to be secured, and Alex says he'll do it. "Lifejacket!" I call as he heads below.

I dash back and forth from wheel to window, monitoring his progress. He's got the anchor against a cleat and he's wrapping it with line, making figure 8's with the anchor underneath, cinching it to the bits. I concentrate on the throttles, attempt to keep the boat as steady as possible. I've got to keep the bow into the sea, not get broadside in the trough, where any boat--no matter the size--could go down in a big-enough sea. I sense momentum from ahead and there's another huge wave. I bang on the window but its useless. The deck is awash in whitewater. Alex's arm emerges first, he's clutching the fluke in one hand and the line in the other. In another minute, he's dripping on the bridge, reaching for a cigarette. He's plenty dry by the time we beat our way through the final mile, take care of operations, and surf our way home pushing 26 knots in the following sea.

De-Con

We've only been offshore about 20 minutes when I get out of bed. The same shit again this morning but worse: the seas have grown larger than 10 feet, the wind blowing 30, even 40 knots at times. I glance out the window on my way to the bridge, and a single diesel tote tank sits unchained on deck. We're running slowly already, but I pull the engines completely out of gear, and Joseph chains down the tank. There won't be a sunrise on the horizon today, but a thousand grays exist there now, the sea a blend of foam and bending light. I run at 900 to 1000 RPMs, roughly half power, and it's not a bad ride. Most people don't run crew boats this way, but I'm paid by the day and like to slow it down.

The platform crane lowers a sling and Alex rigs the tote tank, then we catch a line on the platform leg. It's poly-propelene rope with no give, and after the boat surges twice in good swells, the line parts. Its the first time I've seen a mooring line part on a boat. It sounds like a gun shot. I have to live-boat under the platform edge and receive a hose. For about 40 minutes we stay connected, pumping water. It's easy to hold it in there, but the swells are only growing. A squall approaches and the platform's nearly topped off. We disconnect the hose and put out what remains of the hang-off line, still 200 feet. This time we add a nylon spring to the end of the poly-pro, its Alex's idea.

We spend the next 7 hours without moving the boat, the stern slamming into swells, projecting an oily mist. The sheen is raging fast today, at least two knots from the ESE, which will surely put lots of oil onto the eastern delta--and a fair amount on our boat. Some time around four, the seas are 12 to 15 feet, and the line pops again. Greg calls on 06, and the "company man" has nothing for us, lets us head in. It looks like we've been standing by all day for nothing, watching a fleet of large work boats head for the river to escape the weather.

We surf into SW Pass, spinning the wheel to counteract yawing. The pass is busy as always with ships and dredges, tugs and barges. Rain pelts the windshield and vision is fuzzy, wipers spreading oil. At the Head of Passes, we call the de-con station on 67, switch to 11, and try to arrange a wash-down. Its the IOP Pipeliner, some vender's barge, obviously paid for by BP. I try to get instructions, but its awfully hard to hear. I clutch out and the boat drifts.

The waste water of middle America bears down on us en masse, but the wind prevails and we slide upstream. I can see a guy on the barge speaking into a hand-held radio, but we hear jumbled words, mostly crackling wind. Alex and I decipher meaning from the transmission: it may take a few hours to wait out the present squall. I try to tell him we're in no hurry; he doesn't seem to hear.

We sit for minutes, unsure of what to do. The guy comes back on the radio, but its useless against the wind. Eventually a skiff circles our boat, bouncing in a three-foot chop. A worker on the bow fixes a yellow flag onto a boat hook, then the boat disappears from view under the bow. "Its still yellow," he says clearly on 11, "you look pretty clean, cap." Alex and I just look at each other. Is he wiping that flag onto our hull? It's a cursory inspection, to say the least. We sit there for another minute. The radio again, "You can wait for a wash-down, cap, but it'll be in the morning." Now it's in the morning. Its rough for the river, I'll give them that, but these guys obviously don't want to wash the boat. I tell them to keep it safe, and we head back to Venice.

South Pass 55

With the cleanup suspended for weather and the floating city evacuated, we're left hauling cargo to a small natural gas production platform in South Pass block 55. We're again dividing watches, 12 hours each, and I'm on days from 0600 to 1800. I awake at 0500 to a pounding offshore, the rough-seas morning ritual one of my least favorite, up there with a splitting-headache hangover. I lay in bed as long as possible, then struggle with sox and boots, manage to brush teeth, a shower and shave out of the question. The boat will run 20 knots even in 10-foot seas, but it will also knock your teeth out if you don't hold on. I take the wheel and we're almost there, a glimmer of hope for the day.

As a hurricane makes land in the southern Gulf, the stretch from the Venice Jump to the Head of Passes is lined with boats at anchor, and the crews from the floating city have been hoteled as their luck would have it, although I've never seen more than a light chop at the Baptiste jetties even with huge swells offshore; its protected by barrier islands. And while its rough enough below the delta to send even deep-water Responder boats up river, we head offshore with a series of containers and diesel tote tanks, 550 gallons each, chained and bound to the deck, and a few passengers.

We arrive at 55, a square yellow platform masking sunrise. I top the boat around, rolling steeply in the trough until the stern comes about to face the tremendous metal frame. I back our way under the crane which lowers a personnel basket, a circular standing platform and collapsable webbing with shock-resistant spring, and our passengers are whisked away, clothes fiercely flapping five stories or more to the top. We catch a line to wait for cargo. Looking aft from the stern controls at the back deck, oil comes at us on a wind-driven current, flaying white caps into fibers, the sky a purple bruise.

The radio says Japanese skimmer boats are en route to the Gulf, trumpeting the official line that "all recources are being utilized". Others say BP and the USCG refused offers of help from Dutch boats more than 2 months ago and that an Alaskan skimmer pledged to the cleanup weeks ago is not yet underway. I again hear Billy Nungesser, the portly president of Plaquemines Parish. He says he waited three and a half hours to see Joe Biden and got 30 seconds with the VP, unaware it would just be a photo op; his voice cracks with frustration.

We spend the day pumping water, transferring people and tools to and from a platform due south in block 75. The rig workers run "pigs" to each other via pipes along the ocean floor. We mostly sit on a line, bobbing like a cork, passing time reading books. Its much to rough to work on the boat, but the cranes of both platforms are on the west side--the right side for these conditions, so the loading and offloading operations are safe enough. Positioning the boat is a simple matter of backing and pivoting with the rudder amidships. At 18:00, we're standing by while the slick comes and goes, at times disappearing, and then only a trickle is discernible, released by crashing waves on platform legs and beams.

floating city

The water in Baptiste Collette Bayou runs south to north below an S in the Mississippi, and the sun can play tricks on one's sense of direction, appearing above the river, even from the east side. We awaken at the north end of Baptiste, just barely offshore, moored to the "floating city", a network of barges in place for the cleanup, anchored a half mile from the jetties at the green 7 and just outside the channel. The "city" contains a crane barge and trash bins for soiled boom, offices and living quarters for about 200 workers who begin to emerge on deck and ignite the day's first cigarettes, the heat already upon us.

We received orders last night, loaded seven pallets of ice in the freezer, more than a thousand bags. We're to run clockwise to SW Pass, off-loading to each of the five task force groups near the entrances to Main Pass, Pass A'loutra, South Pass, and then SW. VHF channel 8 pipes in with "crewboat command" requesting we load more boom; I take my turn at the wheel. I have to bow into a serious current without a bow-thruster, put the boat aside the crane barge. I have to be careful to keep the bow tucked (toward the barge) and the current on the starboard side of the boat. I keep an eye on channel traffic, in case I lose the bow and have to bail. The Mary Jean is a quad-screw, like my regular boat, but the four propellers are aligned differently, set up for an outboard walk. I'm used to doing everything in clutch, but on this older boat that might not work. It does for now and we drift alongside.

Our four workers show up, and its Rick's favorite crew, led by Eduardo; he and Rick are boys, joking and laughing, smoking of course. Three of the four are Mexican immigrants, and today's entertainment will center around the Mexican football effort at the World Cup. With our network of vessels close enough to shore, we use cell phones to contact the work boats, compile coordinates and arrange delivery. At about 07:30, we head ESE into the Gulf.

The deliveries are a simple affair, no cranes or platforms, only shallow water and a constant eye on the depth sounder. We drift as the fishing boats come astern, their framework strung with orange boom in place of net--its soiled and brownish and dripping oil, composing the perennial colored mirror upon a placid surface of sea. Otherwise, there's not much visible oil this close ashore, although I suspect most of the banks and barrier islands are infected.

To the west near shore, a few boats seem to drag net and not boom--they appear to be fishing. Rick talks to one on channel 68, and he says he's "catchin' big, white shrimp". I keep hearing on talk radio about "safe" local seafood, "nose-tested" by inspectors; now I have doubts. The sheen will encroach the furthest at slack tide, but still birds fish the shallows, soaring gulls and fluttering terns and frigates harassing the others. By the end of the day, we've seen maybe a hundred dolphin, apparently smart enough to avoid the oil and stay close to shore--surely fish can't be that smart. On the way back to Baptiste, Mexico is defeated, and the guys are distraught for a spell before smiles return and they're again having a good time. One of them shows me a card trick, his only English words are numbers.

We complete the loop and tie alongside a barge at 18:15. It's steak night at the floating city, and I'm enticed by the warnings of fellow crew on the Mary Jean who insist the dining experience must be akin to that in prison. When Rick and Archie return, Calvin and I hop barges to the mess hall, make our way through a tattooed, rough-looking crowd. The food's not bad for the conditions, high-calorie stuff suited to manual labor. A flat-screen TV projects some nonsense, and the atmosphere purveys amiability through a disparate mix of personality and background.

Task Force 5

More than 60 days in, the cleanup of the Gulf is an emerging colossus, a sprawling network of communication and manpower, of truck and boat. Reporting for duty and returning to Venice, I find an ID network which necessitates standing in line, posing for a camera. I find the overall effort expanding like the creeping sheen itself, like the inexorable footprint of man. I board the boat at 22:00, the m/v Mary Jean. The company of my employ now has multiple vessels engaged in the cleanup, and I'm here to fill in on the Mary Jean, an antique of a crewboat, built 125 ft. long in 1980. I'll be on the night watch, but we're only running by day so I take a pillow to the wheelhouse bench and sleep till nearly sunrise.

We back down slip one in Tiger Pass to the GIS Dock, Rick driving the boat. Morning traffic has improved in my time away, boats like Mary Jean now serving as the middlewoman and hauling supplies to the fish-turned-skimmer boats who remain offshore, ostensibly skimming oil by day, banking up to $5,000/day from BP, anchoring by night among the barrier islands. I make myself useful and handle a line, secure the boat and gangway, and a crew of four board. There's a portable generator on deck, 9,200 lbs, it says, just aft of the wheelhouse, which sits forward on the late model Camcraft, a loading deck aft covered with boards. A 20-foot container/freezer sits on the centerline just aft of the generator, and a forklift drops pallets of groceries on the stern. The crew begins to peal plastic wrapping, load boxes into the freezer.

The lead captain Rick, a veteran of private yachts and ocean crossings in addition to supply boats in the Gulf, resides in Florida but hails from Boston and maintains the accent. As I learn specifics, he appears to coordinate a great deal of logistics, claiming things wouldn't get anywhere without his input. He classifies the cleanup as a "clustah f&%@". With BP picking up the tab for everything, workers are making off with coolers, lifejackets, groceries.

After 10:00 at departure, we run south in the Mississippi bound for Task Force 5, the skimmers divided into five packs, each with a workboat to store boom and coordinate deliveries, pick ups and communication. The small fleets migrate delta waters in search of coastal oil, four of them east of the river toward Breton Sound, one west. Aluminum skiffs, the "responder" boats work the marsh, retrieve soiled boom and take it to the "floating city", a network of barges moored just below the Baptiste Collete jetties on the green side of the channel.

Approaching the Head of Passes where the great river fingers into the Gulf, a new de-con station inspects boat hulls for oil. We take SW Pass, the main ship channel, and its mostly empty, a pleasant cruise interrupted only by small vessels for whom we must kill our wake. We hang a left just past pilot town at the end of the jetties, at the red 4. We head NE and reach the workboat on VHF 68, heave to, and the fishing boats come to us, catching lines stern to stern. Our four hands for the day do the offloading, although I pitch in at times. It's amazingly hot, even on the water, diesel exhaust mixing with water vapor, creating a repulsive blend that sends me gasping. The rest of the guys don't pay it mind, instead smoke cigarettes during breaks in the action.

On the way in and up the river, the Capt. Jim Rhodes, a 40-ft crewboat, makes an urgent call to river traffic on 67, he's taking on water and going down, attempting to cross the one mile stretch from Baptiste Collette to the Venice Jump. I meet the captain later, and he tells me his engines began to stall 1/3 mile above the Jump. He beached and saved the vessel, unfortunately landing on rock just north of the intersection.

last night in New Orleans

I'm stuck in class through the weekend, looking at lists of radio frequencies with an instructor who hates teaching and gets by on sea stories and bad jokes, the old, salty bastard. I stare into a book, and the codes and digits melt together; I'm completely somewhere else. Out by four o'clock, I take the freeway into town, gunning for the Zydeco Festival in the french quarter, getting my fix of radio news-talk which has BP behind closed doors considering insolvency. I speculate, find it unlikely, park the truck by a cemetery on Rampart near the police station. It's a sketchy part of town just north of the quarter, but there's a police station.

I walk east on Rampart to Esplanade and hang a right toward the river. I can almost hear the music, nearly sense its presence in waves when people start streaming in the opposite direction. I arrive to an empty stage in a park, stragglers and discarded cups on the lawn. Without destination, I head uptown until I find live music at an outdoor bar by the french market. I order a hurricane to go and drift, music traipsing in the market-stall rafters, street performers taking root where merchants vacate, a fiddler on a tightrope, a cripple with drumsticks.

I cut to the river bank in front of the St. Louis Cathedral, a motley tourist crowd dispersed on the rocks. New Orleans is a fine destination for bums, one of whom calls to me as I pass, "Hey, what's that ya' drinkin'?" It's a woman, early 20s, sitting next to a guy, both with tattered backpacks. I announce my "hurricane", wind up in conversation and offer them sips. The guy, with long dreds under a cap, takes a shy pull and walks off. The woman is extroverted and starts up like we're old friends. She's telling me she's banned from Moe's Tavern in Charleston, SC, while I idly stare at the dirt on her clothes & limbs. I listen for longer than I feel like, then politely take my leave.

There's a sketchy side to the Big Easy, and no trip to New Orleans is right without a romp down Bourbon. You can be offended or amused; its your choice. But you can't deny it and shouldn't avoid it. Select streets of the french quarter can offer pleasant strolls in admiration of architecture and unique cultural appeal, but you can just as easily see a naked, junkie-whore in a doorway or a toothless, retarded beggar, shaking on the sidewalk. The area just south of Bourbon near Canal is an olfactory abomination of vomit and garbage, piss and jizz.

Had enough, I follow the river by truck, snaking northwestward toward the airport. I've got a bottle of red wine to drink, so I park in an empty industrial lot and climb the levy. There's grass beside the path up top and a good view of the river, multiple container ships underway, to the west a tiny sunset. I pour wine into a thin, styrofoam hotel cup; its all I've got. It's my last night in New Orleans, and tomorrow at midnight, I'll board a smaller, older crew boat, again working out of Venice. We'll be running to the hotel barge where the cleanup crews reside. For the first time, I'll actually be assisting the cleanup effort.

BP Reveals New Strategy

BOURBON ST., NEW ORLEANS -- BP today confirmed they have a new plan for the Gulf of Mexico, which includes filling up up the Gulf with oil to create a giant reservoir for future energy needs. From Key West to Cuba to Cancun, a containment dam will be built to trap the spewing crude from escaping the Gulf, announced BP CEO Tony Hayward, in his pompous British accent. Sea water will then be drained from the Gulf through a filtering process in the dams, which will, according to BP engineers, trap enough oil in the Gulf for generations of human consumption.

"We think this will provide a real, long-term solution for the Gulf of Mexico," said Hayward, nauseatingly glib. "You will all be thanking BP long after the cameras have gone. We never really wanted to cap that well anyway."

To construct the containment dam, BP is promising multiple sub-contracts and is reportedly being pressured to consider a Chinese consortium. Said one US government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, "Asians really need to be involved in a project of this magnitude." With estimates of the flow rate increasing by the minute, projections reflect that the Gulf could be full of oil by as early as 2015.

inspired by the onion, and a night on the town

Research, Rebirth

When collecting data on Grand Isle, Taylor Kirschenfeld, an environmental official from Escambia, Florida, scoured beaches bagging oil and sand, feather and fin; he collected for posterity, he must have assumed, for future generations to continually evaluate scientific data to the benefit of mankind. It must have stuck him in the gut when his brain made the connection that eventually lead Mr. Kirschenfeld to defy orders from a government agency.

Kirschenfeld, also an adjunct instructor in enviro studies at the U of W Florida, found something odd in directions from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). It turned out NOAA procedure had his baggies bound for a labratory in Texas, TDI-Brooks International, whose number one clientele happens to be: you guessed it, the oil companies. Kirschenfeld sought a waiver to send his samples to a Florida lab also licensed to conduct such tests.

“Everywhere you look, if you look, you start seeing these conflicts of interest in how this disaster is getting handled,” he told the NY Times. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but there is just too much overlap between these people.” He's also concerned by another rule. Local animal rescue workers are volunteering to treat birds and to collect data that will be used to calculate penalties for the spill, but federal officials say it has to be done by a company hired by BP! (also NYT)

Politics slithers through all of space/time, and most of us stomach it best we can, but why would NOAA engage in such a relationship? A skeptic could say it has to do with influence peddling, with former BP executives in our government and the relationships they cultivate. People like Sylvia V. Baca, the deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management at the Interior Department. She spent 8 years at BP and previously served in the Clinton Administration, and her responsibilities include oversight of the oil and gas, mining and renewable energy operations on public and Indian Lands. Who has the most $ in that mix? It's a common misconception that the oil field runs with only one party.

These thoughts as I traverse terra firma, walking in New Orleans. Passed sundown, I've parked my truck at the bitter end of St. Charles St., beyond railroad tracks in a gravel lot. Basically lost, I check the map to discover I'm next to the river, and sure enough there's a levee a few feet away. I walk to the top and there's the river in a gap between trees, lit by celestials and by the deck lights of a bulk grain-carrier on the opposite bank. There's a cacophony of frog noise at the base. I descend the hill, but the path is fenced and locked.

I head north-east instead, and up St. Charles St., ducking in and out of the trolley way until I find Oak, and people abound in the streets, old timers at a table by the coffee shop, a pretty chill setting. I arrive at the Maple Leaf, a relic of a place, where Rebirth Brass Band plays with energy to a mixed, excited crowd. It's a fantastic show but I've got class in the morning and should be studying. I slip out around midnight, and on the way home I avoid traffic by hugging the levee on a deserted street, passing beneath the Huey P. Long bridge where a change in rules takes place for the boats below. Then houses appear to the right in a 20 mph zone, and I'm creeping, thinking I should be in a taxi. The houses are nice, the setting bucolic, and there's a country club, a huge complex, a castle both defended and threatened by the river. I don't see a traffic light until I'm nearly at the airport. It's a tremendous feat of navigation.

a bird's-eye view

With the flow of oil offshore increasing in previous days, with talk of a government take-over of the emergency effort, it's increasingly difficult to envision daily life as business as usual. It's also progressively easier to feel the frustration of those with lives and livlihoods in the balance.

Yet a morning run is essentially the same as it ever was, current and wind dictating our actions. When conditions cooperate, our job is primarily a pleasure, a boat ride on a sunny day, operations conducted in serene silence or with musical accompaniment from radio/cd. But enter elements: current, fog and traffic in the river, heavy seas offshore; and the coolest veteran will get white-knuckled at the wheel, avoiding close quarters situations in pilotage waters or back-loading cargo at sea beneath a platform crane under threat of a gale.

I'm hit with consecutive days pumping water offshore to other vessels, the larger, steel-hulled work-boats that standby for days or weeks at sea and travel 10 to 12 knots when underway, roughly half the speed we're doing in our aluminum-hulled crew-boat with four Caterpillar 3512 engines. They catch a line off their bow onto a sea buoy, remain tethered and drifting on a floating, polypropylene line, twisted yellow and black maybe 300 feet long. I back our boat from the stern controls until Alex catches a heaving line from the work-boat and they pass a hose. When it's dead calm, we can tie up to the boat, but not today: a steady, 15-knot wind, a 4 to 5-foot swell. I spend the next two hours pivoting and backing, chasing the work-boat back and forth along its constricted path. It's not terribly difficult with a little practice--until the mind wanders...

The story of the leak is preposterous, and it would require a daily summary of various news sources to keep abreast. On the national level, the NY Times has scooped competitors, locating a BP technician who is talking (unauthorized) and leaking company documents, which reveal a long history of trouble with a dubious well. To follow details of the clean up, the Coast Guard response, it takes local radio--someone like Garland Robinette, host of "The Think Tank" on 105.3FM, to stimulate conversation.

I make observations of my own regarding boat movements, and I can say it took weeks for the large clean-up (Responder) vessels to arrive, and when they did, they sat at anchor east of the channel opposite the Venice Jump. The well had been gushing about a month before these vessels left Venice. The dredge Newport, an unlimited tonnage, Army Corps of Engineer vessel, sat at anchor for more than a week upon its arrival in the river. Surely, it could have been dredging berms, not sitting on the hook, but the Coast Guard allegedly restricted their movements by not signing paperwork.

Done pumping water, we're back-loading in South Pass 62 under a yellow monster, a double platform where the Blake 210 drilling apparatus re-works a couple of old wells; depth 370 feet. We shuffle from platform D to platform C, switching cranes, following the comedy of operations that oft becomes the oil field. The current slacks, the wind dies. Alex and I have befriended a roust-about, a grunt worker sent down from a platform to "rig" lifts, hook up the platform crane cable to the cargo on our boat deck. His name is Eddie and he climbs to the bridge to hang out between lifts. With a stature suggesting youth, he's a certified crane operator, under-employed as roust-about in a tight economy, supporting a wife and two kids back in Leesville, La.

A third boat arrives on the scene, and we're standing by again. Eddie explains the drilling process when prompted, displays quite a knowledge of operations. He provides us a different perspective, that seen from his bird's-eye view atop the platform. He offers updates and insight on the slick and the movements of fish and birds, less and less each day. Today, he's most concerned with Tuesday morning's crew change, wants to make sure we'll be here to pick him up. Eddie exhibits a pensive calm, a thoughtful consideration, an acceptance of silence. Sitting with him on the bridge, his soot-covered face relaxes, exposing clean skin beneath wrinkles; he's older than I thought.

The Sulfur Mine

Prior to the Deepwater rig disaster, even a good day offshore in the Gulf of Mexico could be mildly disturbing. Amidst tumbling dolphins and meandering sea turtles, a pervasive despair has always lingered somewhere among the oil & gas rigs that dot the cerulean plain. Today nothing lingers any longer in long stretches of Lousianna's marshlands, more than 100 miles covered in sludge and eerie in the silence of death.

Passed 09:00, our engineer Alex and I start sanding cap-rails beneath a cloudless sky, hoping to finish painting them by noon. At nearly 14:00 with the temp around 100, we're done, relaxing on the bridge when a radio call sends us back into action. It takes little time to crank engines and toss lines, a little more to wait on traffic--your chance to make a break. This time, we're only pulling forward toward the back of slip one, but there's a tug and barge on the west end and I'm forced to "top around", pivot 180, to get the boat under the crane. At 165-ft long, our boat has 10 to 12 feet of clearance broadside in the slip--but only with clear dock space on both sides. The boat pivots quickly and on a dime without current.

We secure under the crane; it looks like we'll wait, I cut the engines. It takes hours some days for all the trucks to come and go, a giant red crane, maybe 5 stories tall, swapping lifts from truck to boat. Alex hitches a ride to the store for cigarettes; he's met an out-of-work drifter living out of his car in the dusty parking lot, waiting for weather to clear and for his job to start on the clean up. Enough work done for the day, I chill on the bridge and watch the shuffling boats, listen to the local radio news that consumes my life. I check lifts as they arrive for destination: Ensco 87, a jack-up drilling rig, a mobile, three-legged monster. It's not a typical run for us, and I've got two prior locations charted. I call another boat for verification.

"It's in Main Pass 296, you'll see it just passed the sulfur mine."
I look at Alex, did he say "sulfur mine?" Apparently.

The sea floor of the Gulf has been divided into a grid and sold off to the oil companies. These boxes are designated on nautical charts with magenta lines and take up nine square nautical miles, each block with an area name and number. The seabed off Virginia was destined for sale before the recent disaster, but plans are delayed. I find MP 296 on the chart and plot a course. It'll be the furthest east I've been in the Gulf, having run the boat from Galveston, TX to the Mississippi and back multiple times. For someone who used to watch whales in the Sea of Cortez, drive ice tours in Alaska, I accept small victories at work in the Gulf, and going someplace I've never been is a good day. The oil slick will be out there; it's taken over the waters east of Baptiste Collette. It's now one, giant slick. But taking the boat offshore for sunset is preferable to sitting at the dock, and I'll be relieved of the watch at 18:00.

When dock workers go for chains and binders to secure the deck load, it's time to roll. I sign paperwork and bring the boat off the dock, trying to be patient, letting fishing boats get settled. It's also easy to get worked up and tense if someone is threatening a collision. I once gave a wide berth to a shrimp boat in the Cameron jetties on the Calcasieu River, where he's not supposed to be fishing. "Thank you, Cap," he said. "We'll pay our child support this month."

When I'm relieved of the watch at 18:00, we're barreling east toward the sulfur mine, making 23 knots with a deck load, consuming about 300 gallons of diesel per hour with throttles on the dash. I'm free to observe from deck, to watch the Gulf go by with Alex and Chris, the younger guys, engineers. They smoke cigarettes, appreciate the adventure of travel at sea. We watch the sun spill into western clouds, and there's the sulfur mine, a rusty, orange behemoth, three platforms connected by cat-walk, all of it ablaze in the amber of sunset.

Slip One, Tiger Pass

On the west bank of the Mississippi below New Orleans and above the Head of Passes, the work-boat docks in Venice have become a coon-ass Mecca for Louisiana's fisherman. Arriving for the clean-up and a shot at a paycheck from BP, this shrimp boat pilgrimage has swollen the waterways with traffic, enhanced the culture, devoured empty dock space and created a real hazard to navigation. The Coast Guard has at least begun to investigate the traffic problem. We'll see...

To reach Venice from the river, its a quick trip on a bubbling current through the Venice Jump and a right turn at the V into Tiger Pass, where two work-boat slips, 50 yards wide and 500 deep, service a variety of commercial endeavors but primarily the oil field. The little town itself rests uneasily beyond the levee, to the west and out of sight.

We're running out of Slip One, a mass of fishing boats junked together and blocking the entrance. Any decent-size boat can build up a lot of momentum down-bound; in the past week I've watched several boats enter the slip blindly, their view blocked by work-boats, two abreast on the north side. They make security calls at least on VHF 13; but its crazy, because the fishing boats aren't monitoring a radio without tunes, and they'll pull off the dock without looking. Despite sympathy for their cause, I can't help to wonder if some want to get hit, hoping for a lawsuit; the lawyer population looks healthy around here. Venice lives in madness.

I woke up offshore one morning, found the boat tethered to a sea buoy. I took the watch at 06:00, coffee & sunrise. In about an hour, we were cleared to head in, dropping off a few passengers on the way. As we neared land, the morning sky appeared as an interesting blend of sunlight, dark clouds and low-lying fog. I made it through the jetties with at least a mile of visibility, and then there was none, enveloped in white. Driving in fog is a video game, and fairly care-free offshore, but its very serious in pilotage waters. As long as I've got a reliable visual on radar, I'll drive the boat hooked up, throttles to the dash if no one's around, but that doesn't happen these days--its a constant boat parade in Baptiste Collette, at least in daylight.

That morning I pulled the throttles back and killed our wake, an immense 8-foot swell that will roll for miles if unencumbered. I reached for the radio and considered a call, checked the speed of the vessel astern on the AIS. With nothing to worry about, I slowly brought the engines up until the fog turned grey and wind whistled against the wheelhouse. Soon rain arrived, and I was blind. Torrential rain is more hazardous to negotiate than fog; a hard enough rain will wipe out any chance of the radar distinguishing a small vessel coming round a bend. I reduced to bare steerageway, saw only lightning out the windows; but just as quickly, the fog disappeared and I could see white-caps in the bayou, lush green foilage on the banks, trees shaking like pom-poms.

The Coast Guard has set up a decontamination center in the Jump, but boats are tracking in oil. Nearly 10 miles from the Gulf in any direction navigable by large vessels, a de-con station in Venice is like gettin' home with dirty boots and headin' to the bathroom to clean 'em up. It's stuck thickly to the hull's of the larger, slower boats.

Down-bound in the Jump and approaching Tiger Pass, I spin the boat around early, pivoting 180 and pointing the bow upstream. I've got more control of the vessel backing down from the stern controls where I can I crank up the bow thruster as precaution. Again, two work-boats on the north end, the mass of shrimpers on the other. I kill momentum with the outboards, reverse the rudder and begin to pivot, placing the port quarter just underneath the bow of the outside boat. I let the bow fall with the current, prepare to "walk" the boat to starboard in case that becomes necessary. It's congested, but clear enough at such slow speed.

There's an old fishing vessel, a real rust bucket, in our spot on the dock. I could run him out, but we've got enough room, so I take the boat in further forward and tie up facing stern to stern to the piece-of-junk boat. Our wheel-wash brings a tiny Vietnamese man out of the cabin to check his lines. He lights a cigarette. Anywhere along the Gulf it can turn from busy to still real quick. He shuffles around, produces a fishing line and weight and tosses it by hand toward the center of the slip. Now he's jigging the line, right in the filthy water of Slip One. An adolescent boy appears and makes to clean the deck. It's just passed 09:00.

Billy and the berm

"Twenty-four miles of Plaquemines Parish are destroyed. Everything in it tonight is dead. This will destroy the marsh forever."

These solemn words are Billy Nungesser's, a portly, sincere politician, the President of Plaquemines Parish. A former businessman who recycled old shipping containers and outfitted them as living quarters for offshore workers, he's in Venice fighting for birds and turtles, and Billy's a hero to mother nature. He gets red-faced and winded talking to multiple reporters each day, espousing plans for a "Berm", borrowing language from the Dutch, a shelf or raised barrier, which may be dredged onto beaches to both inhibit the advance of oil and to prepare for the worst with the onset of hurricane season just six days away.

Mr. Nungesser is fiercely trying to hold onto something, something there for all of us to appreciate--and it's dying around him. At times, he appears choked-up, just trying to convince someone to take action, someone high up. He's requesting federal help, citing BP's indolence, and calling for government intervention to force BP's hand, who according to Billy, proclaiming with a deleted F-Bomb on local TV, "They ain't doin' a f&%@#' thing!" His red face is incredulous, ubiquitous.

While you can readily find images from the marshland, I can say that at sea, legions of portugese man-of-war float dead, as black-tip sharks still swim through the oil. I've seen dolphin close ashore who appear ok (for now) and sea birds sitting in the slick offshore who surely won't make it; all of it beneath a lavender sky.

This morning BP will attempt, again, to cap the well. God be with them.

Meanwhile Mr. Nungesser will continue pleading that it's way-past time to get the right powers-that-be involved, for a leader to arise.

"We're begging BP to step up to the plate, the coast guard, and now I've written the President this morning to demand that we mow these dredges, to put an 80-mile levee in front of our barrier islands... Up to now they shoot down my proposals, give me excuses why this and that can't be done. Well, what can be done?"

Whatever Billy can accomplish, the damage is done but not over. And much more of it still lurks, offshore; its a plume surely visible from space, enveloping titanic portions of sea; another, bizarre blight on the canvas to the astronaut's in orbit and a reminder to us all of our sickly excesses.

A Refusal

I've seen much in the Gulf since returning to work three weeks ago. I've been running a crew boat from Tiger Pass to the Venice Jump, up the Mississippi River, out Baptiste Collette, and offshore--then back. As debate rages and fingers point, I see for myself this scrap of world news.

In my almost 3 years of driving boats in the Gulf, I've seen images both sublime and unappetizing. There is an awesome energy created (and consumed) by more than 6000 horsepower pushing a 165-ft boat through the water at 27 knots. It may be guy-stuff appeal, but when witnessed on deck at sunrise with the boat underway, that energy will blow through your veins like a hard drug, like multiple shots of whiskey. In recent weeks, oddly enough, I find myself more eager than ever to take the boat offshore. Usually content at the dock, sanding and painting in the day, working out and reading by night, I wish to see the Gulf and to monitor the advance of the creeping sheen. It's astounding.

I ran the boat for about 10 days without seeing much if any oil, making it 30 miles from the entrance to Baptiste. Then we began to notice the sheen around the time BP failed with its first containment apparatus. It came in narrow swaths and in tide lines, and then one day in a light chop the whitecaps disappeared; we were surrounded in a thin blanket, shiny like iron.

The advancing sheen is thinned, presumably, by the oil dispersant Corexit, a toxic substance banned in Great Britain, as dramatic irony would have it. On Monday morning, BP surpassed an EPA deadline to stop using it, asserting their ultimate power, claiming they will continue to use the chemical until the well is capped. I've heard scientists question the use of Corexit: is it necessary at that depth, at that distance from shore?

It took awhile, but I finally realized the answer: the dispersant is necessary to keep the oil field running. Boats like mine might be unable to operate in thick, surface sludge. Raw-water-cooled engines might get fouled, captains might refuse to run boats, traffic might be diverted. The American economy depends on the oil field, and you can't shut it down. With our reliance on oil, the US is "all-in" and there's no going back. No matter who we elect to office, no matter what we do. Environmental destruction is as inevitable as death and taxes. It's true wherever you are: in your town, in the far-reaches of wilderness. It sure as hell is in the Gulf of Mexico.