People still suffering from BP oil disaster one year later

Just a few years earlier the P&J Oyster Company was bustling: refrigerated trucks rolled up in front of the loading zone off of Toulouse Street and workers dumped bags of freshly caught oysters for processing on long steel tables.

Now only one man dons an apron and rubber gloves and stands in the belly of the warehouse silently cracking his way through a small pile of cold, grey-green shells. Sunseri recalls the day that would nearly derail the 139-year-old family business. It was the day the BP oil-rig Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010. 

From kilometres away, the flames could be seen through the night as the floating oil-rig ignited leaking gas and fuelled the massive fire. For the 126 workers trying to stop the leak, it became a fight for their own survival. 

Deepwater Horizon burned for 36 hours before the metal structure, warped by the heat, finally collapsed and sunk into the burning ocean. Eleven workers were killed and what followed was the worst oil catastrophe in the history of the United States. 

The dark black sludge stuck to your hands like chocolate syrup, Dave Marino remembers. Marino normally brings sport fishermen out to Barataria Bay where they can try and catch the coveted Red Drum among other fish – and return with prize photographs. But in the weeks after the disaster, the images were of birds and fish drenched in oil, an oil slick the size of Jamaica and 1,000 kilometres of coastline covered in clumps of oil and dirt. 

For Al Sunseri’s business, which he manages with his brother Sal, the full measure of the catastrophe is yet to be seen. He had to let nearly all his employees go and today he sells only a third of the oysters he did before the disaster. 

Down in the Pointe a la Hache harbour, other fishermen are experiencing the same thing. The total amount of crude oil released into the Gulf of Mexico is still under dispute between the US government and BP. According to the judge’s latest decision, it was 3.19 million barrels, more than 380 million litres. 

This is more than BP wants to admit to and less than the government estimates. It took 87 days to stop the leak. BP has tried to put the best face on it.

“The Gulf is showing strong signs of environmental recovery, primarily due to its natural resilience and the unprecedented response and clean-up efforts,” said Laura Folse, BP’s executive vice president for environmental restoration. The Gulf is returning to its condition before the spill happened, according to BP’s five-year report. The US government sees it differently.

“It is inappropriate as well as premature for BP to reach conclusions about impacts from the spill before the completion of the assessment,” said a council of environmental authorities from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Interior and Agriculture secretaries as well as the affected states: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. 

On a tiny island off of Grande-Terre, Louisiana, evidence of the spill can still be found in the sand: dark, sticky clumps of tar, some the size of a small brick. However, the ecosystem of the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf is too complex to only place blame on BP for the disaster in the Gulf. 

Researchers are divided on whether the drastic decline in oyster populations since 2010 could be influenced by factors other than the spill. Researchers lack data on many plant and animal populations from before the accident, making it difficult to determine the spill’s impact. Eventually, the children and grandchildren of local fishermen will have to decide for themselves whether they want to try their luck at catching oysters, crabs and shrimp. In any case, Sal Sunseri has forbidden his 16-year-old son from helping at P&J over the summer. His son should become an engineer.