While Americans frantically dash through crowded strip malls, Paul and Michael Orr jump into their 17-foot Boston Whaler ready to hunt for a different kind of merchandise--the kind that grows in the Gulf of Mexico. They are searching for samples of seafood and sediment located in the oil damaged bayous of Louisiana. Â And what they have found so far may lead to important revelations about potential contamination along the entire Gulf coast. Â
The Orr brothers work for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, a group that has worked closely to monitor the environmental impacts of the worst oil disaster in US history. The Orrs are rugged environmentalists who grew up boating and fishing with their father throughout Pelican state. Since August, they have been working with McArthur "genius grant" recipient Wilma Subra to collect samples from the inlets and coastline, looking for oil and chemical contamination in oysters, shrimp, crab and sediments. They are looking in areas they believe the government has not.
And they have found plenty. Just last week LEAN posted the latest results of their tests, finding high levels of petroleum hydrocarbons in crab, shrimp, oysters and redfish.
Michael Orr
Paul (top) and Michael Orr, Pass a Loutre, LA
Photos by Rocky Kistner/NRDC
Paul and Michael know they are fighting against a rip tide of government reports saying the Louisiana seafood is safe to eat. But like many fishermen in the bayou, they're worried about what they can't see, smell or taste. Â
"We're just out here trying to figure out what's in the environment," Paul Orr says. "We've been consistently finding levels of contamination the government isn't finding. And we're using the best certified labs and sampling techniques."
The brothers guide their boat out of Venice harbor, once teeming with oil cleanup workers and Coast Guard personnel. Now most of them are gone, but the Orrs say the oil is not. They have seen it on nearly every trip to the remote coastlines of the Louisiana bayou. It's no longer floating on the water's surface in thick crusty crude-filled carpets, but it's buried deep in the sand and mud along the coastal shores. No one knows how much still remains underwater, hidden from sight and out of mind. But the oily residue is probably leaching into seafood in some places. And that's what the Orr's intend to find out.
As the small boat heads down the massive Mississippi River channel south of Venice, we come to the Head of Passes, where the river splits into multiple channels that funnel billions of gallons of river water and nutrients into the Gulf. The Orr's take the left channel, Pass A Loutre, which is a remote channel not used by commercial river traffic. Beautiful rows of Rosetta canes stretch out for miles as far as the eye can see. Snowy egrets, brown pelicans and seagulls soar and dive for fish in the river.
Suddenly, the dream-like scenery comes to a lurching stop. A thick brown cloud rises from the river bottom. It's not oil, but silty Mississippi River mud in deceptively shallow sandbars under the opaque river water. Michael and I jump out of the boat and begin to push. The water is cold, a lot colder than just a few months ago. Winter weather up north has pushed frigid water south down the Mississippi, pushing Louisiana shrimp and sea life further out into the warm waters of the Gulf.
Finally we push the boat into a slightly deeper channel and set off down the river. We end up repeating this exercise several times. It's nearly impossible to know where to avoid sandbars down here. They shift and move constantly with the tides and wind.
After an hour we finally reach the mouth of the river pass, where the steel grey vastness of the gulf stretches out into the void. An old dark lighthouse sits in the middle of the channel. It once was on land, but now it's completely encircled by water; a telltale sign of the rapid coastal destruction eroding the marshlands here.
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