TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2010


KLMNO


The BP Disaster


E5 Mental health may be one more victim of oil spill emotions continued from E1


Opportunity,” has now hired more than 3,200 boats, paying $1,200 to $3,000 per day. In some places, the program has been welcomed as an eco- nomic lifeline. In Pass Christian, Miss., the mayor said so many lo- cal fishing boats have enrolled that “it looks like the Spanish ar- mada when they’re coming in in the evening.” “The unknown of where you


were going to get your next pay- check from, all of that was taken away when BP employed us,” said William Scarborough, 40, who owns five of the boats that sail out of Pass Christian harbor. He said many of his crew mem- bers have been dragging oil-ab- sorbing boom underwater to check for pockets of oil, a task that is much less back-straining than their usual work catching, hauling and sorting oysters. “It’s as close to a stress-free work envi- ronment that I could have ever have hoped for,” Scarborough said. “I mean, my guys, they show up to work with bells on every morning.”


But for crews based in other spots around the gulf, working for BP can mean long hours, con- fusing orders and an unsettling up-close view of the spill in their fishing grounds. Off Alabama, for instance, cap- tains hired by BP have described playing a grim hide-and-go-seek with the oil. When they start their work in the morning, the oil is under the surface, a solid mass that shows up on the sonar device they use to look for fish. As the day warms, the oil rises until it bubbles up to the surface, a slick of orange goo in every direction.


A huge mess The scale of the mess is stag-


gering: One captain, who wouldn’t give his name, com- pared the work to “fighting God- zilla with a bow and arrow.” “Everything we’ve ever known


is different now,” said Chris Gar- ner, a charter-fishing captain who has gone to work in the cleanup. “Anything I ever built, I mean it’s gone . . . the business, my client base, the Web site; I mean, it might not as well have been there.” Don McPherson, another Ala- bama charter captain, said the nature of the work — which for him requires long, exhausting


PHOTOS BY MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST


Above, a cleanup team helps maintain a network of protective boom in marshland near Chauvin, La. Below, Thomas Ramirez wears a bandanna to protect himself from the sun and the smell of oil. BP has opened seven offices for workers with physical and mental health issues.


days on the water — could com- pound the problem, by making it hard for captains to talk about their stress with their families or one another. “When I go home, all I want to


do is eat, take a shower and climb into bed,” said McPherson. “In bed, I feel safe. . . . It feels like ev- erything is okay and I’m away from all this. When I get up in the morning and I see the marina and I have to see the oil in the gulf, it is just very depressing.” On June 23, the death of Allen “Rookie” Kruse revealed the strain this work can impose. Friends and family said Kruse, 55, was upset both about the state of the gulf and about his difficul- ties with the cleanup effort, in- cluding payments he hadn’t re- ceived. Authorities say Kruse shot himself in the wheelhouse of his boat as his crew prepared for another day working for BP. Steve Picou, a professor of soci-


ology at the University of South Alabama who has studied the


vices to his family and crew, and to others in his region. Around the rest of the gulf, a spokesman said, BP has opened seven offices in places near the cleanup work where workers can seek help about physical and mental health issues as well as other problems. It has also distributed flyers to


workers saying, “If you begin to feel overwhelmed by the work, contact your Team Leader to dis- cuss taking a break.” “The last thing we want are people that are, physically and mentally, not fully capable of helping with the response,” BP spokesman John Curry said. “We want them to be physically and mentally whole.”


Not doing enough?


psychological impacts of major disasters such as the Exxon Val- dez oil spill and Hurricane Katri- na, said it was surprising to see the first suicide from the BP oil spill so soon. The first suicide linked to the Exxon Valdez hap-


pened four years after the spill, he said. “This is very sudden,” he said.


“It is almost like Exxon Valdez fast-forward.” Since Kruse’s death, BP has said it has offered counseling ser-


Some officials have criticized BP for not doing enough to help these cleanup crews. Louisiana officials, for instance, have used $1 million to provide mental- health services to them. But they say BP rejected a request for an


additional $10 million to contin- ue and expand the program, as part of a larger request of $300 million from state wildlife and health officials. The good and bad of working


for BP’s cleanup were illustrated in just the few hours that Cortez — the Louisiana crabber — and his crew spent working one re- cent day, tending the boom on Bayou Dufrene. On the good side, they said, BP


pays well. “After this job, everything’s


gonna be cash money,” Cortze says hopefully. The men on the boat joked about what they’d spend it on: maybe a new truck with a double cab, maybe a nice new sport-fishing boat. Another one of his crew, 21-year-old Joel Sanchez II, jokes that they won’t be able to “make it rain” like hip- hop stars do in their videos, toss- ing money into the air at a night- club. But after BP’s paychecks arrive,


they might at least be able to make it drizzle. “That’s why I’m here. Gotta pay


my damn bills,” Sanchez says. Still, their work was long and tedious: Lay out boom, pull it up, move it from place to place. The deckhands could last only about an hour in the sun before they had to retreat to the center of Cortez’s bare-bones boat for shade. There was no air condi- tioning and no bathroom, only a bucket. They know every song on the radio.


And, although on this day there was very little oil on the bayou, it wasn’t even clear they were doing any good: The boom has proven ineffective against oil driven by waves and against wafting below the surface. Cortez said he was dreading the day that he first sees fish killed by the oil. Then, he said, “I [will] know


it’s killing our fish, it’s killing our industry, it’s killing our culture,” he says. As Cortez brings the boat in for


the day, a brown pelican swoops down near the boat. Cortez leans forward for a closer look. It’s tinged with oil. Like the men on this boat, it’s not clear if the bird’s problems are temporary or terminal. “Not real dirty, but dirty. I can see it on his wings,” he says, opt- ing for optimism. “Good enough to survive and fly.” muiy@washpost.com


fahrenthold@washpost.com hedgpethd@washpost.com


“The unknown of where you were going to get your next paycheck from,


all of that was taken away when BP employed us.” William Scarborough, who owns five boats working on the cleanup


Inspectors focus on seafood from outside no-catch zone seafood continued from E1


the Motivatit oyster harvesting and processing business, said he understands the restrictions, but “I’m on the side of don’t like it.” Of his company’s 400,000 acres of oyster farms, only 3,000 remain open, he said. The state wildlife and fisheries


department dispatches about 50 boats daily to patrol the borders of the closed waters. So far, more than 460 criminal citations have been issued for commercial fish- ing in closed areas, while 210 warnings have been issued. Fish- ermen have dumped 23,385 pounds of shrimp, 531 pounds of crabs, 262 trout and eight man- grove snappers caught in closed waters.


Once on shore, fishermen are required to document where their catches were made, and state in- spectors review their records four times a year during unannounced visits. But the paperwork is not foolproof: If fishermen slip past patrol boats, they could easily fal- sify the records to say their haul is from open waters. “You have to believe what they put out here,” said Gary Lopinto, a seafood program manager for Louisiana’s health department. Lopinto was one of about 60 seafood safety workers from across the coast to train at the NOAA center at Pascagoula in the art of the sniff. NOAA officials say they will play a critical role in quickly identifying tainted sea- food in the field and were trained to smell contaminants down to 10 parts per million. At the NOAA lab, Lopinto was taught to sniff cucumbers, water- melon or even canned corn to clear his nostrils. But this is the real world. Amid the din of heavy


DAVID RAE MORRIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Gary Lopinto of Louisiana’s health department has been trained to spot tainted oysters.


DAVID RAE MORRIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST SEAN GARDNER/REUTERS


Workers remove heads from Louisiana white shrimp at C.F. Gollott & Son Seafood in D’Iberville, Miss. Many in the industry worry that customers will shy away from gulf seafood even after the spill is over.


machinery grading and sorting oysters at the Motivatit process- ing plant, Lopinto neutralized his nose by smelling his sleeve. Then he scooped a jiggly oyster out of its shell and held it up to his moustachioed face. He sniffed. “If there’s any detection of oil,


you’re gonna got a nasal sensation . . . or maybe a little gas smell,” he said. “This, believe it or not, smells like corn to me.” If any oil-tainted seafood does escape detection, people who ate it would most likely suffer gastro- intestinal discomfort and prob- lems such as diarrhea, said Shaun


Kennedy of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense at the University of Minnesota. Kennedy said that compounds in the oil are also known to cause cancer, but that would likely re- quire long-term exposure, not just one meal. Kennedy said that if seriously tainted seafood did make it onto somebody’s plate, the diner could probably detect the oil by its smell or taste.


“If you had a highly contam-


inated oyster, it wouldn’t taste right,” Kennedy said. “It’s a fairly low risk that you would eat any


heavily contaminated oyster and not realize that something’s wrong with it.” The nature of this spill has made it especially difficult for sci- entists to forecast its impact, ei- ther on the gulf’s creatures and or the humans who make them into sandwiches and gumbo. On the surface, it is not one solid black slick, but rather a scattered arma- da of tar balls, tar mats, orange “mousse” and rainbow sheen, spread out now across hundreds of miles of coastline and open wa- ter. In addition, a good deal of the


Oysters await processing in Louisiana. A third of the gulf is closed to commercial fishing.


oil seems to still be suspended un- derwater, where scientists have very little experience tracking its movements or its impacts on fish and shellfish. Along the gulf, many fishermen are worried that the memory of the spill will cause customers to continue shying away from gulf seafood even after the well has been capped and most of the oil has been cleaned away. “The brand ‘Louisiana gulf sea-


food’ is getting hit in the market. The image on their mind for ev- erything has been ‘oiled sea- food,’ ” said Voisin, whose family’s


DAVID RAE MORRIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


David Herrera opens oysters for testing at a lab in Metairie, La. Some analysis is done in Seattle.


ties to Louisiana seafood can be traced back to 1770.


Seafood is a $3 billion industry in the state, and officials are plan- ning a $33 million, year-long, in- tensive advertising campaign to promote the shrimp, crabs, oys- ters and redfish that are still be- ing caught in open waters. “South Louisiana, we rose after the Civil War and we’ll rise again,” Voisin said.


muiy@washpost.com, fahrenthold@washpost.com


Fahrenthold reported from Washington.


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