Tar Balls Found Along Key West Shoreline

[Dr.Phool]

Source: ABC news

KEY WEST, Fla. -- Tar balls are starting to roll up on Florida beaches.

Coast Guard officials said 20 tar balls were found on the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor State park on Monday.

Park rangers said they found several more tar balls throughout the day along the shore, with the heaviest concentration happening at high tide. The tar balls were found at the adjacent Navy beach at Truman Annex, as well.

INTERACTIVE: How Big Is The Gulf Spill?
SPECIAL SECTION: Gulf Oil Spill

Crewmen said samples of the tar balls were taken to a lab for analysis.

The Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuaries will conduct shoreline surveys starting Tuesday morning. That will include an aerial search.

The public is asked to report the sighting of any tar balls to the U.S. Coast Guard at 1-800-424-8802. Any oiled shorelines can be reported to 1-866-448-5816.

People should be warned that tar balls are considered hazardous materials and should only be retrieved by trained personnel.

Read more: http://www.wpbf.com/news/23586693/detail.html

---

Thanks to Scurrilous for the link

[Ian David]

1. Here's one...

[intheflow]

7. Skin of Evil = Cheney's kin. n/t

[notadmblnd]

2. Not a very imformative article

Which Florida beaches. How big are these tar balls? What makes them any more hazardous than a can of motor oil?

I know you didn't write it, you just posted it. But geesh, that journalist did a pretty poor job of composing his little font of non-information. I thought the first rules of journalism was; who, what, where, when and why?:shrug:

[Dr.Phool]

3. It was breaking on the 11:00 pm news.

I saw it on 10 Connects in Tampa. They didn't have a link up yet. Scurrilous found this one.

!0 connects said they found 20 balls between 3" and 8" in diameter.

The beach was in Key West, indicating that it's been in the loop current for a while.

[defendandprotect]

4. Obama should be taking this over . . .

this is going to worsen . . .

and like Bush's wars being Obama's now . . .

this could be Obama's Katrina -- or even something more!!

[marylanddem]

6. Yes, he needs to kick some ass SOON.

take the freaking company over, send in the marines, whatever the hell it takes to assert control over those BP nincompoops.

[defendandprotect]

25. And, though it's insane to even have to think about . . . but how are these coastal

areas possibly going to protect themselves --

Is there anything they can do to get ready??

Florida Keys, for instance?

East Coast ???

We're all just lame sitting ducks?


We need some independent review of this hole that has been blown and the damage

to the ocean floor . . . BP should be taken over, IMO.


Ugh!!

:crazy:

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tomm2thumbs]

9. just know that he is so p*ssed off right now that Obama is holding his own

he can't stand it, and will say anything to annoy Democrats because he is so disturbed that he is on the losing side. That is a good sign things are finally getting to him - he is really finally losing his cool

[FreshRocket]

8. It's pretty damn sad.

[jae1227]

10. Brit Hume told me that there was no oil

[ixion]

11. Fort Zach is on the Atlantic side of Key West

which means the oil is right now decimating the keys ecosystem on the gulf side. :(

[old mark]

12. I think we will see more of it on Atlantic beaches pretty soon -

I saw predictions on it spreading North to the Carolinas, then out to the Atlantic proper.

You do realize that there is still cleanup work being done on the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989...
this could be around for 30 years or more.


mark

[ixion]

14. Yep. I was in Alaska when the Valdez thing happened...

and I'm aware that the they're still doing clean up there. :(

[salazarmms]

13. I think they would have reported that first...

depends if they could see the decimation on the gulf i guess
it looks like the loop current goes a little south of the Keys so the gulf side may fair better than the atlantic.

[ixion]

16. Yeah, because they've been so, you know, forthcoming and all...

:sarcasm:

The Gulf of Mexico is a very large puddle with poor circulation. It will most certainly NOT fair better than the Atlantic side, which has a strong current and is more capable of balling up and dissolving the tar balls.

[old mark]

17. The Gulf is an incredible place for fish and marine life of all kinds.

At least it was till recently...
We have not even seen the beginning of this, and we won't know the scope of the damage for years to come. So many people in different countries depend the Gulf for their livlihood and their food and this may ultimately affect them all - us all.

mark

[ixion]

23. Indeed... that incredible ecosystem is one of the reasons I chose to live in this area

and it makes me ill to think about the damage that will cause. :cry:

[old mark]

24. I have relatives near Galviston, TX - I am wondering how long till that area is

affected...I am very afraid it will all be destroyed.

mark

[OJones]

22. I hope

some part of that beautiful, underwater heaven can escape irreparable injury.

[HooptieWagon]

15. Should wait and see if the tar balls are from the spill.

There's a lot of shipping through the Straights of Florida. It's very possible that, like the tar balls found in the Florida Panhandle, these are from a different source.

[Ruby the Liberal]

18. Tar Balls off Key West Up Oil Spill Spread Fear

Source: CBS News

(CBS/AP) Nearly two dozen tar balls have been found off Key West, Fla., the U.S. Coast Guard said, but the agency stopped short of saying whether they came from a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/18/national/main6494488.shtml?tag=stack

---

Here we go, folks.

[lunatica]

19. Would it be better if the tar balls came from another spill?

Is it possible these tar balls aren't from the oil 'spill'? Wow! That's encouraging!

:sarcasm:

[ixion]

20. Yep, for two dozen that they see, there are millions more

floating around in the keys ecosystem, doing all sorts of damage.

Tourism is the number one source of income for the Florida Keys, or it was.

[florida08]

21. lol

yep here we go with the spin. 20 tar balls have been seen where they have never been seen before but we're not sure where they came from. Guess when it shows up in Palm Beach they'll still be wondering. :popcorn:

[DemReadingDU]

26. Large Tar Balls Wash Ashore in Vero Beach, Officials Deny BP Oil Spill Link

posted by salazarmms
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4386984

[HockeyMom]

27. WINK News Ft..Myers/Naples

Showed three tar balls collected off Ft. Myers beach. Report said they haven't been "tested" but there were dozens more. They also reported that several sick sea turtles also washed ashore and they were placed in "fresh water" and the cause of their illness was still to be determined.

This is still being UNDER REPORTED here. I suppose to prevent panic and keep the tourists coming.

Update as of 5 PM. They are now reporting that these are not "Oil". The report also said the oil is about 200 miles off the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Yeah, right. BTW, my daughter and son-in-law were supposed to come visit us in 2 weeks. I told them fine, but forget about going to the beaches here. We will go to the Hamptons a few weeks later.

[Igel]

28. Tar balls are hazardous?

Well, I guess in some sense.

On the other hand, the local Indians used to line their unbaked clay pots with tar-ball material for cooking pots.

Yes, I can only imagine that Houston c. 1491 was a hell-hole to live in. Too bad we know precious little of the locals. Between plague, the Spanish and Mexicans, and other tribes they're gone. (One of the American genocides that Anglo-Americans get to take a pass on blame for.)

[slackmaster]

29. They're mainly annoying

I lived pretty close to the coast in the late '60s when we had oil spill problems in Southern California. The mandatory post-beach ritual that we had to go through before setting foot in the house, included using lighter fluid and tissue paper to clean the oil off of our feet and shoes. It was like that for several years, and I'll bet I could still find a few tar balls at La Jolla Shores today if I looked hard enough.

[Duer 157099]

30. I know who's balls ought to be tarred

The BP executives, that's who

[Devil_Fish]

31. yes I'm sure they are un-related to the oil spill, just like I'm sure Iraq had WMD's.

Just like I'm sure Die-Bold Vote-o-matic touch screens count every vote.

[1620rock]

32. Why sure they count every vote, sometimes two or three times.