There is HOPE after the oil spill.

I am by no means trying to downplay the damage that will be done by the eruption (can't bring myself to call it a spill). For those people whose livelihoods depend on fishing and tourism the impact will be miserable but long term it may not be the extinction level event that people worry about... if they can stop the leak.

A lot of people have shown that the Persian Gulf spill in 1991 was the worst in history, to date. At 420 million gallons, I guesstimate we're about 25% of the way there using the 60,000 barrels a day that the Coast Guard mentioned early on and that the "Government" now acknowledges.

Went looking for current photos of the area to see what it looks like 19 years later (an eternity for those of you directly impacted).

Came across this from CNN that lifted my spirits somewhat:
www.cnn.com...

But there were no current photographs so I kept looking, stumbled across this article that helped me pinpoint location:
employees.oneonta.edu...

Using their map of those locations that were most heavily impacted, found it on Google Earth:


Abu Adi Island does look a bit like a dead zone, but a lot of things look that way to me on Google Earth.

Downloaded a few of the Panoramia photos of a relatively close beach though and it DOES look like the area has recovered quite well.


Uploaded January, 2009


Uploaded May, 2007


Uploaded October, 2007

Because the Persian Gulf is SO enclosed I can only imagine that the impact was severe and there really was no great effort made on cleanup.

I know this is small consolation for those of you who live on the shores of the Gulf. I can only hope that some part of the 20 billion BP has set aside for YOU actually gets to you being the the care of our government.

It's actually small comfort to me right now because I really prefer most animals to people and watching the marine life and the birds suffer is torment to me but, life wants to be... most of these animals will recover in time.