After big 1979 spill, a stunning recovery

News-Observer ^ | 6/13/10 | GLENN GARVIN

[AT7Saluki]

The oil was everywhere, long black sheets of it, 15 inches thick in some places. Even if you stepped in what looked like a clean patch of sand, it quickly and gooily puddled around your feet. And Wes Tunnell, as he surveyed the mess, had only one bleak thought: "Oh, my God, this is horrible! It's all gonna die!"

But it didn't. Thirty-one years since the worst oil spill in North American history blanketed 150 miles of Texas beach, tourists noisily splash in the surf and turtles drag themselves into the dunes to lay eggs.

"You look around, and it's like the spill never happened," shrugs Tunnell, a marine biologist. "There's a lot of perplexity in it for many of us."

For Tunnell and others involved in the fight to contain the June 3, 1979, spill from Mexico's Ixtoc 1 offshore well in the Gulf of Campeche, the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico conjures an eerie sense of déjà vu.

Like the BP spill, the Ixtoc disaster began with a burst of gas followed by an explosion and fire, followed by a relentless gush of oil that resisted all attempts to block it. Plugs of mud and debris, chemical dispersants, booms skimming the surface of the water: Mexico's Pemex oil company tried them all, but still the spill inexorably crept ashore, first in southeast Mexico, later in Texas.

But if the BP spill seems to be repeating one truth already demonstrated in the Ixtoc spill - that human technology is no match for a high-pressure undersea oil blowout - scientists are hoping that it may eventually confirm another: that the environment has a stunning capacity to heal itself from manmade insults.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/06/13/530250/after-big-1979-spill-a-stunning.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz0r8LixHLV

[AT7Saluki]

Apologies if repost. Another example of the audacity of humanity vs. the reality of creation.

[Jaded]

Thanks for the post.

[hoe_cake]

hopeful and informative.

Articles like this keep me grounded.

[HungarianGypsy]

It’s the same as forest fires. The Earth will always replenish itself after a disaster.

[Erik Latranyi]

I have been to Prince William Sound in Alaska and toured the area by boat.

You cannot see any signs that an oil-spill took place.

[a real Sheila]

walk on the beaches and lift some rocks.
You will see it then.

[dfwgator]

The Earth is not fragile.

[F.J. Mitchell]

This too shall pass, after being milked dry of every possible advantage for every possible politician.

[norraad]

. .. and it's chock full of more oil than we could possibly use in prolly 10 forevers!

[Constitution Day]

BTTT. Thanks for the post.

[agere_contra]

The damage done by detergents and steam-cleaning - not oil - to that place was terrible. There are still sterile patches.

But the ‘control’ beach they just left to itself has done really well.

[Alberta's Child]

For all of the hazards of an oil spill, it's worth noting that crude oil exists in a natural environment -- which means nature has a way of dealing with this sort of thing.

An oil spill isn't all that much different than a devastating forest fire, when you think about it.

[Alberta's Child]

Very interesting. This may be one reason why a friend of mine in the logging business tells me that they don’t re-plant trees where he works. They simply clear-cut an area, strip the limbs off the pine trees right there, and leave the branches and pine cones behind to re-seed the area naturally.

[Moonman62]

Crude oil is all natural and biodegradable.

[Travis McGee]

ping

[Travis McGee]

Post 11: interesting! And hopeful.

[agere_contra]

True. It’s no accident that there are bacteria that can live off crude oil.

[trumandogz]

After only 31 years!

[Ellendra]

But you get up into wetlands, where you're cleaning up shrubs and sea grasses, and it's far more difficult.

Actually, grasses are pretty good about soaking up oil so fast it doesn't have time to get very far. I remember reading about a tanker truck that overturned near "sensitive wetlands" on its way to the refinery. By the time emergency vehicles got there, the oil that had spilled into the swamp was gone. Someone on the scene broke off a phragmites reed from a nearby clump, and there was the oil, it had been sucked up into the hollow part of the stem just like a drinking straw.

[married21]

Makes me think of Mt. St. Helens. It was completely desolate after the big explosion. But now a lot of plants have re-started.

To me it’s a theology lesson. God’s life-giving love breaks through wherever and whenever it possibly can.