Return to Ground Zero
Text and photos by Carl Safina – click here to view photo gallery.
On June 10, I returned to ground zero, the site of the ongoing oil blowout.
James Fox shot this video. I took still pictures.
The Delta in Louisiana is astonishing in many ways, not least that people live so aquatic an existence in a place so fraught with lethal weather.
It wasn’t hard to find oil. It was harder to find open water; I’m not sure we found any.
At ground zero the sea was full of oil, full of boats. The ship that flared flamed gas as it captured some fraction of the oil. The helicopters below us like dragonflies on a black-and-blue pond.
Even miles from the site of the erupting well, the sea seemed coated with oil. In massive streaks, some a mile long.
It was not a happy scene; it seemed apocalyptic, indeed.
