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.