June 4, 2010

The day started early as we left New Orleans in the hot muggy morning light. The drive to Grand Isle takes about two hours, plenty of time to contemplate what I was about to see. It had been a week since I last in Grand Isle and I had heard things were getting worse, but nothing could prepare me for what I was about to see. Once we made it to the southern part of Louisiana, about an hour into the trip, we started to see signs advertising small shops closed due to dwindling fish supplies and others pleading with the government and BP to help them feed their children. By the time we got to Grand Isle and met the team there was a sense of frustration and anger that was palpable amongst the people milling about the marina.

We boarded the boat and headed out into Barataria Bay, the home of the most fertile oyster and shrimp and fishing grounds in the Gulf of Mexico, our destination was several small islands where birds congregate. As we pulled up to the shore we saw oily booms washed up on the beach and thick red oil covering the sand along the shoreline. A few hundred yards down was a small heron covered in reddish colored oil, thicker than molasses. As soon as I looked at the bird I knew she was waiting to die, shivering and too weak to stand. I knew this was just the beginning. Further along we saw more birds whose normally bright white feathers were stained orange and knew it wouldn’t be long for them either.

Soon a dark cloud rolled in above and we hurried back to the boat only to get caught moments later in a squall that threatened to flip the small boat that had ferried us to the island. A grueling ride back to port left us drenched in the oily water splashing over the bow of the boat. As I jumped off the boat the taste of oil was still in my mouth and we wasted no time drying off. We didn’t have much time before we had to drive back to New Orleans to fly to Florida and so we interviewed several of the fishermen at the marina and headed to the main beach on the Gulf side of the island.

As soon as we arrived I was greeted by a horrible sight, a beach covered in thick blotches of oil as far as the eye could see and barely anyone on shore attempting to clean it up. Now I know why everyone was so frustrated, the oil had reached the beach, which was bad enough, but there seemed to be little effort to clean it. Soon, two uniformed individuals asked us to leave the beach ‘for our own safety’ and ushered us away but I knew I would be back within a week. From what I saw that day, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

The morning started early…5:30AM and didn’t stop all day. While I am not much of a fan of early mornings I don’t mind it so much when the reason is an adventure like the one we are headed towards today. It all started three weeks ago when we called the producers at ABC’s Good Morning America and said…I don’t think anyone has ever filmed a dive in an oil spill…we should do it. Three weeks of logistical planning, risk assessment and even postponement due to weather and we got a window to head out to dive in the oil. Our goal was to find the thickest oil/chemical dispersant mixture we could and get in the water.

We had full hazmat outfits which included full dry suits, Kirby Morgan hard helmets and air hoses and in water communications. All of the gear was designed to protect us from chemical exposure and it ended up being one of the most grueling days I have ever had diving. We did two dives, one in clear water to test the gear and the next on in the thickest nastiest oil we could find. The helmet weighed 30 pounds by itself and it was 90 degrees out. Wearing a dry suit it was sweltering and all of us were exhausted and dehydrated within minutes. By the time we got in the water we quickly forgot about the discomfort as the gravity of the situation hit us. All around us was a thick soup of orange particles floating in the water column to a depth of about 15 feet. On the surface a sheen of oil covered the water. The dive lasted about 30 minutes and after wave after wave of oil/chemical dispersant mix washed over us it was time to head back to the surface. This was one of the most terrible experiences of my life seeing first had what this oil spill looks like under the water and knowing that this contamination is spreading over hundreds of miles. Even if they do manage to cut off the oil tomorrow the oil that has escaped will spread, following currents as far as the Arctic Circle via the Gulf Stream, wreaking havoc along the way.

We made it back to the harbor around midnight, exhausted and ready for a few hours of sleep before we start a round of press tomorrow. I know that my father and grandfather would have been doing this if they were alive and that they would have been just as horrified by what they saw as I was. I can only hope that we learn from this and start to truly take the kind of drastic action necessary to begin the decades long road to recovery, for history will not only judge us by our mistakes, but by what we do to fix them and so far…I fear history will judge us harshly.

For videos and pictures from Philippe’s visit to the Gulf, visit: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/behind-the-scenes-with-first-divers-gulf-oil-spill.php?campaign=TH_rotator

The Big Easy…always nice to be back, I arrived this morning in New Orleans from Charleston, South Carolina, where I had been the night before at a gala event for the South Carolina Aquarium. They honored my sister Alexandra and me with the Legacy Award last year and then invited me back this year to present the award to Al Gore. It was an honor and a perfect pre-cursor to my trip to fight the oil spill in the Gulf. This is my second trip, to read about my first trip two weeks ago click here… Now I am down here again to cover the spill from a new angle…can’t talk about that…it’s top secret but stay tuned as you will learn more in the next day or so. This is the greatest environmental disaster of our lifetimes and it has only just begun.

For photos and video from Philippe’s trip, go to the following link:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/dispatch-gulf-oil-spill-philippe-cousteau.php

The following is an excerpt from Philippe Cousteau’s blog for Larry King Live, to read the whole blog, click here.

The sun was blazing down as I walked up to the door of the little shop we had come to visit on Dauphin Island, just south of Mobile, Alabama.

This was my last day visiting the Gulf region after the devastating oil spill of only a few weeks earlier. The trip had started out earlier in the week with a briefing by scientists and field staff of the Ocean Conservancy, one of the leading ocean conservation organizations in the United States, who have been on the ground since day one of the disaster. That briefing had also included a helicopter trip to survey the damage from above to get an overall picture of the scale of the disaster.

Joined by members of the Ocean Conservancy, my team and I had driven three hours from New Orleans along the coast. This trip was not only to survey the environmental damage, but also to spend time with the individuals who live along the coast and whose lives are being forever changed by this catastrophe.

Read more: http://larrykinglive.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/17/the-tragic-face-of-%e2%80%98drill-baby-drill%e2%80%99/#more-20598

My grandfather, Jacques Cousteau, was an eternal optimist and believed in the ability of humanity to find solutions to the world’s problems.

Now more than a decade after his death and on the eve of his 100th birthday, I am concerned that we are still struggling with the same challenges that he faced throughout his lifetime. Daily onslaughts against the environment such as the new proclamation to open up offshore drilling, while not as bad as it could have been, are still a worrisome sign.

We are a society that still too often treats the environment as somewhat of a nuisance…to be cared for only when it suits our needs…surprisingly, I believe that the solution might just come from an unexpected place…video games…
(read the rest of the post here: http://larrykinglive.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/08/lkl-web-exclusive-philippe-cousteau-on-finding-a-solution-to-an-old-problem/)

About six months ago, I wrote a blog entry about how carbon emissions to the air aren’t just causing global warming — enough of them wash out into the oceans as carbonic acid that they’re destroying our beloved coral reefs, too.

I am still on the case to find out how we can stop this double devastation from happening.

Guess where my detective work has led me now—to those big ugly black bricks (OK some of them are white) that power up all our lovely laptops and iPods and cell phones.

And not just chargers, but the rest of the “always-on” gadgets in our houses—microwave oven clocks, computer fans and displays (yes, even pretty screensavers), and all those TVs and DVD players always waiting for our remote control commands.

What do our chargers and blinking gadgets have to do with coral reef destruction? A lot—since I found out that together these “vampire” energy-users are sucking up to 10% of the power used in a typical home. And more power use in America means more carbon. Over half of our electricity still comes from burning coal in big polluting power plants that have never had to fully live up to the Clean Air Act.

OK, so what now? While unfortunately the reefs are struggling to survive, we do know there’s plenty we can do about it just by making simple changes in our habits that wind up being cheaper and better for us as well as the planet.

Almost everything we do takes energy, including studying on our computers, turning on the lights, and heating our lunch in the microwave. One-fifth of the total energy consumed in the United States each year comes from household energy use.

But did you know that 80% of the energy used by your microwave is used just keeping the clock on?

Getting rid of the vampire power that’s consumed when appliances are turned off or are not being used is a great place to start. Wear a watch, and put your microwave on a power strip so you can turn it off when it’s not being used! In fact, by unplugging items such as your phone chargers, computers, televisions, radios, DVD players, and hair dryers when you are not using them, you can help save energy and protect oceans from those nasty carbon emissions that are damaging our ecosystem.

Go on your own exploration to find out how much energy is wasted in your own home and schools by visiting the home page of Environmental Education Week (EE Week), which is a program of the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation held the week before Earth Day each year. Get more tips and links from the EE Week website on how to conduct an “energy audit” of your home and learn more about where your energy comes from and where it’s going.

I am honored to be this year’s EE Week National Spokesperson. In this role, I’m headed to New York today, where I will visit the New York High School of Environmental Studies—an amazing place where 1,500 students from all five boroughs of New York get to learn everything they need for their diploma through the lens of environmental studies. I’m going to help them discover more about their energy. I’ll write more about that soon.