Day 4

Day four.

Slept in till 6am. Still hot and humid.

We spent this day out in the helicopter again, flying eastward into Alabama.
This is where the reality finally hit me. Flying over Mobile Bay between the
land and Dauphin Island you could see extensive oil slicks and sheen. Not so
bad in itself until you really looked and saw dolphins swimming in it, it
looks so benign from 2000 feet up. That was a very sobering sight. But again
the enormity of what this region is facing was brought home to us. We landed
for refueling and decided to visit a local beach that had tar balls reported
on it. Sure enough there were extensive areas of tar balls and the water was
quite turbid. People were still using the beach but not allowed to swim. The
laughing gulls were everywhere and in a group of 20 I observed, three were
obviously open mouth breathing, not a good sign, and one, as it flew off
seemed unsteady. I had observed one bird drinking from a pool of water
surrounded by tar balls. The flight back to New Orleans took us along the
coast and over Lake Pontchartrain. The sun was going down and there was a
haze to the day. We were in Huey helicopter, and all I could think as the
sun was reflected off Lake Pontchartrain and our Safety Officers helmet was,
my God, Apocalypse Now! We had just seen tar balls over an extensive area of
beach, most of it still in the water sunk to the dips in the sand and some
areas of oiling on the shoreline itself.

All so sad and very sobering.