As another year clicks on by, our earth is feeling the impacts of corporation horribly wrong.
Our marine wild life may never be the same and thousands if not millions of sea creatures will die or feel the affects of BP greed and our mass consumption of fuel for decades.
In thinking about all gods creatures today, I was reminded that while many of us are powerless to help the situation in the gulf we can help the rescue groups that are caring for the oil slicked birds and animals.
I want to say Bravo to Singer Jimmy Buffett and two friends are hoping their new rescue boats could help save birds and marine life under threat from the nation's worst oil spill. The boats are specially designed to traverse shallow marshlands, the breeding grounds for a wide variety of wildlife off the Gulf Coast. "Essentially we sketched something out on a cocktail napkin and came up with the idea," says Mark Castlow, a boat builder in Vero Beach, Fla.
That was on the second day of the disaster, he says, as he watched images of the spill on television and saw the need for a boat that could reach the shallow waters of Gulf Coast estuaries.
Castlow shared the idea with his friend Buffett, who agreed to underwrite the cost of the $43,000 boat. Shortages of equipment to help contain the oil — and rescue wildlife — have been a recurring problem since the explosion April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig according to Carys Mitchelmore, an associate professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
Buffett, who graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1969, met with school president Martha Saunders in June to brainstorm ways he might help. The songwriter then decided to donate the first boat to the university's Gulf Coast Research Lab in Ocean Springs, Miss. There are plans to build three other boats of the same type.
The boat is needed because the lab's boats are not able to navigate waters as shallow as 10 inches deep like the new one being donated. The new boats will be used by researchers and graduate students to go out in the estuaries and marshes."
Castlow and Jimbo Meador, a friend and colleague at Castlow's Dragonfly Boatworks, designed the S.W.A.T. boat — an acronym for Shallow Water Attention Terminal — with a misting system to keep injured wildlife cool after being brought on board in the Gulf of Mexico's summer heat.
"A canopy encloses the entire boat, and that's a big deal because now you can work under shade and misting," Castlow says.
Madilyn Fletcher, director of the University of South Carolina's School of the Environment, says reducing the stress on injured wildlife is key to helping animals recover, and the idea sounds sensible to her.
"Anything that you can do to save these damaged birds is all for the better, and the more you can do to reduce the stress on them while you are trying to do that is all for the better, as well," Fletcher says.
As of Monday, 893 visibly oiled birds had been rescued off the coasts of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, according to the Consolidated Fish and Wildlife Collection Report, which tracks numbers reported by government agencies and rescue centers to the Unified Area Command in the spill zone. Another 328 oiled birds from the five states have been found dead.
There are those who believe that these estimates are profoundly under reported.
Be well and care for your beloved animals.
Kelley
