Gulf Oil Slick Report from a charter captain

I did not write this up. Mark Miller from Primo's Charters did. There is also a youtube video on the link below.

gallery.primofish.com...

PRIMO's Horizon Oil Spill Report - May 6, 2010
© Photos by Mark Miller © Hi-Res Source

Welcome. I am Mark P Miller, P.E. from Gautier, MS. I kept hearing Media Hype about the Oil Spill about to come ashore, and even my path out of the West Pascagoula River was being blocked by Oil Booms. The Weather was laying down, so I decided to go take a look for myself in order to plan for what my homestead may encounter soon. I took my son Luke (12 Years Old) out of school to assist me on this journey. Initially I thought I would get out about 20-30 miles and find a bunch of oil and come back. However, I was prepared to spend the night and go as far as necessary to determine the extent of the situation. We ended up going all the way to the DeepWater Horizon Spill Site, 105 miles away (Straight Line). Our Trip encompassed 237 nautical miles, 27.5 hours, and 106 gallons of fuel.

The Oil Spill happened on April 20 and this Trip left the evening of May 5 and continued thru May 6. To summarize my findings, I believe the damage and forecasted damage is being way over exaggerated. While any Oil Spill should not be taken lightly, we found very little evidence of contamination until I reached about 30 miles from the Incident Site (75 miles from my home). In addition, most of what we found looked more like brown algae than oil. I believe Mother Nature has some very strong recuperation properties which is evidenced by the extreme Bioluminescence observed. I have never seen such strong Bioluminescence in my entire life (I am 50 years old). I hear that there is oil feeding bacteria and I can only assume this bacteria is what is creating this Bioluminescense. Also, most of what we did find was collecting in the Tidelines and there was not much evidence in between.

Click the link for additional text, pictures, and video.

Mark Miller claims the oil spill is grossly exaggerated. While I do not necessarily agree with his assessment, it is an interesting read. Keep in mind, Mr. Miller was in the slick almost a week ago and much has changed. It was good to hear that although affected, the sea life was still alive.

[edit on 11-5-2010 by slated]

As I understand it, algae only luminesces in alarm. This happens when they die too. These algae weren't glowing for the fun of it, I don't think. It's most likely they were being killed by the oil.

Besides, this oil doesn't look very much like the oil-slicks that were seen after such events as the Exxon-Valdise spill. It looks more like enigine oil does after a blown head-gasket, but redder.

Just because someone has spent a lifetime at sea it doesn't mean that in this case his opinion is very reliable.

I take the video evidence in the amateur footage more than what this man says, personally. Also, BP don't have any reason to overplay this spill, quite the opposite.

[edit on 11-5-2010 by Karilla]

Propaganda works both ways.