Yesterday, I went on another mission into Louisiana’s Barataria Bay to document and monitor the impacts, clean-up, and containment efforts in and around Barataria Bay. Having flown above the Louisiana coast on numerous occasions and witnessed massive amounts of oil flowing into Barataria Bay, what I saw came as no surprise to me. And while it came as no surprise, it was nonetheless just as gut-wrenching as it was day one out in the field documenting this catastrophe first-hand. It will never get any easier watching our precious Gulf ecosystem dying a slow, painful death. It will never get any easier photographing birds soaked in oil or porpoises swimming in an oily sheen. It will never get any easier looking at oiled soaked absorbent boom crumpled up in oiled covered marsh grass, knowing that the grass is dying and that it is only a matter of time before the delicate land of which the grass holds together also faces an oily demise into the sea. It will never get any easier looking into the eyes of hardened men and women who have lived off of this land for generations and seeing the pain in their faces as their entire way of life also dies an oily death. It will never get any easier but, we will keep on doing it. GRN will continue to take to the sky and water to document this epic disaster and the even greater epic failure to respond to this BP drilling disaster accordingly.Long after the media has left and moved on to another explosion, we will still be here telling the story about our coast and communities. We will continue to defend our wetlands and defend ourselves. We will continue to defend the coast. We will continue fighting for the health of the rivers and streams that feed into the Gulf, like the Pascagoula in Mississippi and the Apalachicola in Florida. We will continue to fight for healthy bays and estuaries in Texas and Alabama. Our mission at the GRN is, in part, to protect and restore the natural resources of the Gulf of Mexico. And, as yesterday clearly demonstrates, the natural resources of the Gulf will need plenty of protection and restoration for a long, long time to come.Special thanks to photographer Robin Walker, www.robinwalkerphoto.com.Jonathan is the Coastal Resiliency Organizer for GRN.
