Mexican blend

An accident on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to change the way of life of the entire coast. Newsweek went to meet the giant oil slick to Louisiana fishermen

Silver-haired shrimp fisherman Bruce Drury says the oil slick off the coast of Louisiana has shrunk somewhat in recent days. But he is not at all happy about this. “They pour all sorts of chemicals into it to thin the oil. For her to go deep. Nothing to photograph. For reporters to lose interest and leave,” he explains. And then, Drury is sure, the undercurrents will carry oil and other chemicals back and forth for months: “They will disappear from the headlines, but the fish will pay for everything. And so do we."

We sit on the sun-warmed boards of the pier in Venice, Louisiana's southernmost town, known to the people of the state as "the end of the world." These days, Drury and his extended family had to keep a 24-hour watch at sea - now is the season for shrimp fishing. But now the fisherman does not even know if he will ever be able to get the schooner out of the bay: on April 22, after a 36-hour fire in the Gulf of Mexico, the British Petroleum platform sank, oil began to leak from an underwater well, and the authorities banned fishing east of the Mississippi. You can still fish on the west side, but Drury says you can't catch shrimp there.

The resulting oil slick is already being called the ecological catastrophe of the century. “Recently, they have begun, little by little, to reveal to the public the extent of the leak. The numbers grew day by day. At first, I thought the press was blowing a molehill out of a fly, but when the winds started to drive this spot here and when the wind carried the smell, we panicked,” says the 67-year-old fisherman. Drury hopes the stain can be stopped, and he would also like to believe the rumors that BP will pay them a good compensation. But he has a hard time believing it.

Drury recalls how much effort and nerves he had to beat out compensation from insurers after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “Our family lost four out of six boats and all the houses, but at first they sent me a check for $106 and 23 cents,” he says. Rybak hired a lawyer, paid him several thousand dollars, and eventually won some kind of compensation. His neighbors were less fortunate. “The hurricane destroyed the supermarket. In my opinion, its owners are still suing, so there is no normal store in the city - only a shop where there is bread, milk and canned food, ”says Drury.

His youngest son, the big Eric, nicknamed Nut, married four months before the hurricane washed Venice off the face of the earth. “This is the first point that the Katrina hit,” he taps the dock boards with a meaty finger. “And everyone had only New Orleans on their tongues.” The Drury family returned home 11 days after the storm. The boats were broken up, and the new house, in which Eric had invested all his money, was scattered all over the coast.

Only a year later, Eric managed to buy the skeleton of a new boat. For several years he himself collected it in parts. He named the new schooner "Miss Sammy Lynn" - in honor of his wife. “My grandfather was a fisherman, my father was a fisherman, my uncle was a fisherman, my older brother was too. And I always wanted to be like them,” he says. "This is my American dream."

During the conversation, his cell phone rings intermittently, and Eric hastily answers, but each time with visible disappointment. "I'm waiting for the magic call," he shares, explaining that idle fishermen are hoping to make some money by helping BP curb the oil slick. Drury Jr. has already passed two safety briefings, without which it is impossible to take part in the work.

Eric takes out two papers from his pickup truck - certificates of completion of the course. "Do you know what this is? he waves the papers. - It's a joke! We grew up on the water, and they explain to us for four hours that the alligator is a common animal in the southern states and that you can’t kick it or poke it in the eye with a finger to see if it’s alive. In my sophomore year, Eric was told for a long time about the dangers of oil: “If ten years after these cleaning works I suddenly find cancer, they will show me this piece of paper and say:“ It can be seen, Eric, you didn’t follow our instructions well. ”

HAMBURGER INSTEAD OF FILLET

The oil leak prompted President Obama to ban new offshore exploration in the US until platform safety rules are revised. However, paradoxically, in a town where an oil slick threatens to disrupt the entire way of life, they are in no hurry with calls to punish BP and stop drilling.

“They say that oil and food are incompatible, but these are two industries that feed this region. Here, many fishermen fish during the season, and the rest of the time they work on oil ships. I'm depressed, but I don't hate them. Let them just stop it and make amends,” says Eric. When Barack Obama visited Venice last week, Eric was lucky enough to be standing nearby, but he was so worried that he didn't say a word. “I'm glad he came. It is clear that he does not have a magic wand, but it cheered us up a little. I think he left too soon."

Drury Jr. admits that he does not yet have a plan in case all the bad predictions come true. “I don't know what we will do if the oil reaches the swamps. How can this be cleaned up? What will happen to our reputation? Louisiana supplies the best marine mollusks and crustaceans in the United States, nowhere else in one patch is there such a variety of fish species. And after this story, who wants fish from Louisiana? - the fisherman is experiencing.

New Orleans and the surrounding area are famous for their seafood restaurants. At the end of the month, a traditional fish cuisine festival is expected here. But everything is changing right before our eyes. In one of the restaurants, the poster "tender fillet" is changed to "classic hamburgers". Another fish restaurant's advertising sign, "We don't serve frozen fish to friends," may also need to be replaced. At a roadside motel in New Orleans, a mother and daughter ask the clerk where to eat. “Just not in the fish one,” the mother clarifies. “I hope it’s not because of the oil? It has not reached us yet,” the man replies. He fails to convince them.

At first glance, the coast looks pastoral, if that's what you can call the combination of lush green fields, oil refineries and rusting piles of metal left over from the Katrina. In some places, signs of anxiety that have taken possession of the population are also visible. The closer to the coast, the more often phrases like “The Lord forgives, the Lord will help rebuild” or “Save our coast!” are found on church boards. A home-made poster “Obama, send us help!” is displayed near one house, and devices for washing birds from oil have already been installed nearby. Some cunning lawyer hurried to put up a poster advertising his services for those who are going to file a lawsuit against BP.

At the entrance to the military port, heaps of bright orange floating booms are stacked. They calm the inhabitants, creating the illusion of violent activity. Winds and waves have battered this floating fence, nevertheless, they continue to lay it out for kilometers, giving the marshes the appearance of a swimming pool. The effectiveness of the booms leaves much to be desired - in some places large slicks of dirty-rusty oil drift on the surface on both sides of the fence. Below them, fish and shrimps flicker in the brownish water. So far, the fish are behaving as usual - only jellyfish suffered, and 29 dead turtles were thrown onto the shore of the Mississippi. However, according to Moby Solanga, director of the Gulfport Marine Mammal Research Institute in the same state, the autopsy did not confirm that the death of these endangered turtles is directly related to an oil slick the size of Puerto Rico.

But Prof. Rick Steiner, an Alaskan marine conservationist, is confident it will only get worse. “The moment the oil hits the water, the battle is already lost,” he says. He hopes that this accident will be for offshore development what the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was for the nuclear industry. “Maybe they will finally adopt laws that will tighten control over this industry,” the ecologist dreams.

From the moment he arrives in Louisiana, Steiner, like other specialists, goes on raids on boats and takes off in helicopters to assess the scale of the coming disaster. “You have to be realistic. Well, how much will they collect? 10%? Some will evaporate, some will settle to the bottom, some will drift on the surface of the water or in the depths, and this will deal a huge blow to the marine life,” he says. Steiner says that in Alaska, where a similar disaster occurred as a result of a tanker accident 21 years ago, the damage to nature has not yet been compensated. “I have worked with oil spills all over the world, and almost everywhere the authorities and commercial companies are trying to downplay the effect of the accident and embellish the effectiveness of their response,” says the expert. - The reality is usually much sadder. After the accident in Alaska, the authorities tightened the rules related to the operation of tankers, but they forgot about drilling platforms.”

BP PAYS FOR EVERYTHING

BP workers, along with volunteers, environmentalists and the military, used all possible ways to neutralize the stain: they tried to burn it, protect it, disperse it with chemicals. The commander of the operation, Admiral Thad Allen, admits that no one really can estimate how much oil spilled into the water - the leak occurred at a depth of 1.5 km. Pollution also threatens the Mississippi River if ships caught in the slick go to its port.

Now the biggest hopes are placed on a 98-ton dome, which is used to cover the well as a temporary solution. Time will tell how effective this is - the technology is being used for the first time. “It's a pity that the construction of the dome did not begin until after the accident,” says Steiner. - It's like starting to build a fire truck after a fire. The consequences could be catastrophic. And we are in the midst of mating season, spawning.”

Joe Adams, a heavily tattooed fisherman, wields a small electric saw, cutting up large trout on a massive wooden table. "It's on the clean side of the river," he says. Adams is not sure that people will remain here if the oil reaches the shore: “What should they do? I have been fishing since I was 13 years old. Dropped out of school to fish with his mother and father. I’ve been trying to call BP all day today, but they don’t answer: apparently everyone is trying to get through to them ... "

His young colleague Peter Young is the captain of a small boat and makes a living organizing fishing trips for tourists. “My wife, who works part-time at the clinic, is now looking for a full-time job because it is not clear when I will be able to return to my normal job - if at all,” he worries. Now Young is afraid of only one thing: that his family will not receive normal compensation - "already so many people rushed to file complaints, and 70% are not fishermen at all." According to the law, the fisherman says, only $75 million is allocated for compensation.

These days, Yang is moonlighting as an excursion for journalists to the oil slick and back. And when there is no one to carry, he and other fishermen hang around with a bottle of beer in the bay in the hope of hearing good news. The good news, he reluctantly admits, is that the slick that threatens five different states will be blown out to sea, or at least washed ashore in another state. On the east coast of Florida, where oil threatens to bury the beach season, the same hopes are cherished.

After the accident, the United States received offers of assistance from the UN and 14 states - from neighboring Canada to South Korea. Help was politely declined. "At this point, the United States is not facing something that it cannot handle on its own," the State Department said. Meanwhile, Congress is threatening to bury the energy bill as it contains prospects for further offshore development, and Democratic senators are demanding an increase in oil spill compensation from $75 million to $10 billion.

The presidential administration is now also having a hard time. During the election, Senator Obama visited New Orleans, chiding President Bush's poor response to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding. Now Obama is being accused of literally the same thing - of reacting too slowly. As a result, high-ranking administration officials were sent to reassure the people in five states under the threat of oil pollution. And White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs began posting daily progress reports on his blog. Almost every report contains a promise that has already become a slogan: "BP will pay for everything."