Pungent dark tide moves like a shadow towards the wildlife reserves

[depakid]

There are just streaks of it at first: long, reddish-brown ribbons painted across the surface of the sea like stripes on a tiger. Other parts are a multicoloured sheen. Then come the darker, thicker, more menacing shadows. “See that right there?” Lieutenant Chris Aument , of the US Coast Guard, asks as he guides his helicopter across the Gulf of Mexico. “That’s the oil. But I didn’t think it was meant to be that close.”

It has been nine days since he last flew this route down to the Mississippi Canyon, an area of undersea oil fields and surface rigs 130 miles (210km) southeast of New Orleans. The last time he was here the Deepwater Horizon rig was ablaze, the air was heavy with smoke and he was winching up survivors from a rescue boat.

Now the rig is lying on the seabed, and the air rushing in through the open door of the helicopter reeks of the oil that is gushing at the rate of 210,000 gallons a day from its drill pipe.

The outer fringes of the slick, which is 600 miles in circumference, were licking at the marshlands and wildlife refuges of southeast Louisiana yesterday. By tomorrow they are expected to approach the Mississippi coast in what is feared will be a wide swath from Louisiana to Florida.

Frantic efforts are under way to limit the damage, including pumping fresh water into the marshes to fight the tide and spreading oil-absorbing booms to protect ecologically sensitive areas — in particular, the Chandeleurs, a chain of barrier islands that are home to 34,000 wild birds, including a nesting colony of brown pelicans, which came off the endangered list only last year.

The Gulf region is facing its worst environmental crisis since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana, has declared a state of emergency and appealed for 6,000 National Guard troops. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that the scale of devastation could be “mind-boggling”.

Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer — who, along with US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry, had expressed confidence that the slick could be successfully fought offshore and that all resources necessary had been deployed — called on private boat owners to volunteer their vessels.

An aerial view of the pungent tide provides a glimpse of what most people have until recently seen only on charts: mile upon mile of darkened water. Where the rig once stood five ships are arranged in an arc as if gathered to pay their respects. This is where Transocean, the Swiss company that owned the rig, and BP, the British oil giant that leased it, had hoped to reap millions of gallons of oil from the seabed — and where 11 men died when that ambition ended in an explosion.

On board the vessels are engineers, technicians and robotics specialists, trying to cap the gushing well using remote-controlled submarines a mile and a half below. Elsewhere, skimmers are scooping oily water into barrels; other vessels are corralling the worst of it with booms.

On the night of the fire, Lieutenant Aument recalls as we circle the scene, this spot glowed orange. “You could pretty much see the fire from 60, 70 miles away. It was lit up like daytime with the fire and when we got close up you could feel the heat, intense heat. “Imagine that thing: it held 130 people and now it’s on the bottom of the ocean. It’s kind of weird.”

More (with video): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7113015.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

[midnight]

1. This is such a tragedy. I hope that those who are heading up the efforts to

fix, and clean up are our best and brightest.