Hurricane Rita in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. (Photo courtesy of
Jeff Schmaltz, NASA/GSFC )
Hurricane season starts soon. Experts predict an active season with four “major” hurricanes. What happens if a storm hits while there’s still an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Tanya Ott reports.
Transcript
Hurricane season starts soon. Experts predict an active season with four “major” hurricanes. What happens if a storm hits while there’s still an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Tanya Ott reports.
If a tropical storm hits while there’s still oil in the water, it could disastrous for the coastline and several miles inland. Mark Wysocki is a Cornell University climatologist.
“All that oil would get into the marshlands and some of the homeowners’ properties and so forth and that would make it very difficult then to remove that oil from those types of locations.”
When Katrina hit Louisiana it destroyed some of the oil distributor piping, and they’re still cleaning up in some of the wetland areas.
Wysocki says the one upside is that oil makes it harder for water to evaporate. Tropical storms need evaporation to build strength. So an oil spill might actually keep storms smaller.
Until they work out the logistic challenges that go along with hosting out-of-town volunteers, organizations are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.(Photo courtesy of the NOAA)
No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.
Transcript
No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.
The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana is a consortium of environmental groups trying to coordinate volunteers to help clean up the environmental damage to hit the coast.
Steven Peyronnin is Executive Director of the group.
“There is the potential that we may need volunteers for extended periods of time–for weeks, but certainly there are challenges to arranging logistical and housing support for that. So, in the interim we are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.”
Right now they’re in need of people with HazMat training, but anyone can register to volunteer. The website is crcl.org.
You can also volunteer for clean-up at volunteerlouisiana.gov.
They’ll likely be looking for volunteers for months.
The gulf region is the world's largest producer of oysters and shrimp(Photo courtesy of the NOAA)
When an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded last week, gulf coast officials knew they had a problem on their hands. But as Tanya Ott reports from Alabama, everyday they find it’s worse than they originally thought.
Transcript
When an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded last week, gulf coast officials knew they had a problem on their hands. But as Tanya Ott reports from Alabama, everyday they find it’s worse than they originally thought.
It’s estimated more than 200-thousand gallons of oil are spewing out of the well each day. Cleaning up using chemicals causes problems because it might make it easier for marine animals to eat the oil. Burning the oil on the water is not great either. Casi Callaway is with the environmental group Mobile Baykeeper.
“The air quality impacts from it and therefore the health impacts from it are great – and frankly unknown.”
It’s not just an environmental crisis. It’s an economic crisis. This area is the world’s largest producer of oysters and shrimp. And the pristine gulf coast beaches fuel a tourism industry worth 20-billion dollars a year.
Hawaiian Monk Seal on Sandy Beach (Photo by Ann-Marie Kirk)
Hawaiian Monk Seal (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
This story is about Chester. Chester is one of the
most endangered marine mammals in the US. He’s a Hawaiian
Monk Seal. This year, Chester decided his annual molt will
take place on a popular beach. Anne Keala Kelly
reports:
Transcript
This story is about Chester. Chester is one of the
most endangered marine mammals in the US. He’s a Hawaiian
Monk Seal. This year, Chester decided his annual molt will
take place on a popular beach. Anne Keala Kelly
reports:
Chester is among only 1200 Hawaiian Monk Seals alive today. Most of them live in the
Northwest Hawaiian Islands.
They’re called Monk Seals because they’re solitary animals.
They prefer their own company to socializing with each other, especially during a
molt. Molting is a process that renders them weak and vulnerable.
“This animal is on the beach because it is going through a huge physiological change
right now.”
That’s David Schofield. He’s the marine mammal response coordinator in Honolulu for
NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“It’s shedding all of its skin and fur in a relatively short period of time, keeping
his behavior very minimal. So he is actually not getting into the water, he is not
swimming; he is not expending a lot of energy.”
He says Chester has
chosen to molt on Kailua, an East Oahu beach that attracts thousands of visitors. It’s not a very safe place for a defenseless seal. Because of budget cuts, NOAA relies almost
completely on volunteers to help protect seals when they come on shore. They keep
curious people and their pets away from Chester.
Chester is known here. He’s been seen on a number of Oahu beaches over the years.
Usually he stays along isolated stretches. But he’s never been seen on the busy east side. In
fact, he is the first Monk Seal anyone recalls seeing on Kailua Beach.
DB Dunlap coordinates volunteers for NOAA. He says this is not the first time he’s seen
Chester.
“I met Chester in 2002. And he was emaciated and skinny, I didn’t think he was gonna
make it through the day he was so pathetic looking. Now I realize that he had just
finished a molt, just exactly like he’s doing here and during that process they lose a lot of
weight.”
The molt takes a while. About two weeks into his molt, Chester went missing. He’d rolled into the water. He
probably went into the ocean to eat. A couple of hours later he was back on the beach
about half a mile farther down. The volunteers quickly reassembled the yellow crime
scene tape around him fifteen feet in each direction.
Now, going into day 19, he appears even more lethargic. And… he smells bad if you’re
downwind. Half of his fur is hanging in dying patches on his now loose skin. David
Schofield, with NOAA, describes where Chester is in his molt.
“His belly and his face are pretty much done. That nice silvery coat is the new fur and
the brown stuff on the back is the old molt. So we’re saying right now he’s at about the
50% mark.”
One of the volunteers watching over Chester is a Hawaiian man named Eric Poohina. He
says though the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian
creation chant, native Hawaiians have spiritual ties to seals like Chester. Poohina refers to him as Kalaheo.
“I’m not naming him, I’m just referring to him as a Kalaheo, a Kalaheo is a verb, it’s not a
noun. Kalaheo is a proclamation, a urgent global proclamation. That animal is doomed.”
As Poohina explains the Hawaiian cultural relationship to this animal, he’s also
expressing the frustration many feel over political and economic values that have brought
the Monk Seal to the brink of extinction.
In the main Hawaiian Islands, military and real estate interests have over-developed the
coastline. They’ve been taking over the seal’s habitat. And in the Northwest Hawaiian
Islands where most of the seals live, young seals become easily entangled in fishing
industry debris. The young seals often drown. And, military maneuvers disrupt normal
breeding and nursing of healthy pups.
Schofield: “If this population is gonna recover, it’s gonna take all of us. We need 2900
of them for 20-years to get them off the endangered species list.”
(chanting)
Volunteer Eric Poohina is chanting about the sacredness of Chester’s ordeal. 26-days after
he started, Chester has finished his molt. It’s a process that has remained virtually
unchanged in his species’ genetic code for more than 15 million years. Imagine, once a
year, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, nature demands that you just have to
stop and let it all go.
Poohina: “What the chant means is we acknowledging the laws of the universe, yeah.”
Dave Lemberg from Western Michigan University envisions not only opportunities for water sports, but also opportunities to see historical sites along waterways. (Photo by Tamar Charney)
If you traveled this summer, you might have noticed more and more cars with canoes or kayaks on top. Recreation associations say paddle sports are growing in popularity. And so are efforts to give paddlers places to go. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports some of these places benefit more than just the person in the boat:
Transcript
If you traveled this summer, you might have noticed more and more cars with canoes or kayaks on top. Recreation associations say paddle sports are growing in popularity and so are efforts to give paddlers places to go. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, some of these places benefit more than just the person in the boat:
It just stopped raining, which has made the air even more thick and humid than it was before. But there’s a slight breeze coming off the water.
(Sound of splashing, scraping, and paddling)
Dave Lemberg from Western Michigan University slides his yellow kayak into the St. Joseph River in Southwest Michigan.
“There’s a heron off to the right.”
We’re at the beginning of a water trail he’s helped to create. It is one of two pilot trails for The Michigan Heritage Water Trail Program.
His idea is that mapped-out water trails will lead you to places where you can put in and take out your boat, places to stop and stretch your legs for a moment, and places where you might want to stop and check out a historical bridge or museum you pass by. Lemberg wants to see these kinds of
water trails created all across the state.
“We are looking at this as a type of heritage tourism. Every river, every piece of coastline in the Great Lakes has a story to tell.”
As we paddle down the river, signs guide us from point to point. Along the way the signs tell about the history of the area, and refer to a trail guide that contains even more information.
“The country was settled on water trails; we just didn’t call them that.”
Water trails are popping up all over the country. Paul Sanford is with the American Canoe Association. Last month, the organization launched an on-line database of trails. There are more than four hundred of them. He says people new to the sport like them because they tell you where to go. And he says these days you don’t just find water trails in beautiful areas.
SANFORD: “You see more and more trails being developed in urban areas as a way to change public attitudes about a waterway that might have historically been pretty industrialized, pretty uninviting to local citizens as a recreational resource that folks are saying, ‘Hey wait a minute, we can have fun on this river.'”
LEMBERG: “Let’s see, let’s back up and go over there this channel seems to have disappeared.”
On the St. Joseph River, the water trail passes ruins of bridges, old mills, and other remnants of early settlements dating back to the 1800’s. There used to be bustling communities along rivers like this, but many riverside towns were left behind when the interstates took a different route. Dave Lemberg thinks water trails can be a way to revitalize some of these bypassed communities.
“So the vision is people paddling from bed and breakfast to bed and breakfast, eating in local restaurants, browsing in local stores. There’s where well be eating, on the deck up there, overlooking the river.”
After a morning on the river, we arrive eight miles downstream from where we started. One of the signs directs us up a creek to the Mendon Country Inn.
(Sound of door)
Gerard Clark is the chef and owner of this historic inn. He says the water trail has been good for business.
“Since the inauguration which was in August last year, we’ve a seen a three-fold increase in our canoe business which has impacted on lodging and as well as our dining facilities. We have a lot of city folk who come in who are so stressed out you can’t believe it, after a couple days on river and good food they unwind.”
Clark says the trail is drawing people from all over the region, and the hope is, paddle trails like this one will become a tourist draw in other places as well.
Around this time last year, President Bush signed an order to establish the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force and now, a newly-formed coalition wants to help. (Photo courtesy of
whitehouse.gov)
Last year, President Bush called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help coordinate clean-up of the Great Lakes. Now a new coalition of conservation and environmental groups says it wants to help with this latest government effort. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has
more:
Transcript
Last year, President Bush called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help coordinate cleanup of the Great Lakes. Now a new coalition of conservation and environmental groups says it wants to help with this latest government effort. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:
The new group calls itself The Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition. It’s headed up by the National Wildlife Federation and the National Parks Conservation Assocation.
Members say they’ll be closely involved in the government’s process of drafting a plan to preserve the Great Lakes. Andy Buchsbaum is a co-chair of the Great Lakes Coalition.
“This is our chance of a decade, and if we don’t get the planning process right this time. It could be another decade before the Great Lakes have a chance to recover from some of the damage that they’ve sustained.”
Last May, President Bush created the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force. It’s composed of federal agencies, as well as state and local authorities. The task force will develop a plan this year to address problems like invasive species, pollution, and coastline damage.
Buchsbaum says for the plan to be a success, Great Lakes preservation needs to become a national cause, not just a regional one.
Scientists say part of the problem with erosion along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico begins in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Weber reports:
Transcript
Scientists say part of the problem with erosion along the coast of the
Gulf
of Mexico begins in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Tom Weber reports:
In a recent report… the U.S. Geological Survey says Louisiana’s
coastline
is disappearing faster than first thought. By the year 2050… one-third
of the state’s current coastline could be gone.
Restoration depends a lot on sediments. As they flow south… they’re
diverted to build new land along the coast. But the USGS’ Jimmy
Johnston
says the locks and dams along the Missouri… upper Mississippi… and
Ohio
Rivers trap much of that sediment…
“They have had numbers as high as 67% of the sediments that come
down the
river are being diverted or meeting these locks and dams. If you have
less
sediments there’ll be less sediments to build land.”
Johnston adds more study is needed to know just how much locks and
dams in
the Midwest affect Louisiana’s coast. For the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium, I’m Tom Weber.
Hurricane Rita in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. (Photo courtesy of Jeff Schmaltz, NASA/GSFC )
