The Gulf Of Oil

I don’t do very many personal essays here, but as some of you here know,back in the day,  I was a gulf of mexico sponge diver,  and boat captain, and at one time the gulf was my backyard  or 2nd home if you will. I would spend most of the summer out there–a week or so at a time, and I’ve seen –and sometimes interacted with– every sort of sea life from the smallest reef dweller to the big pelagics.    

I’ve seen abundant life all over (except in the dead zone, miles off shore from the Crystal River Nuke plant). The kind of stuff recreational divers pay thousand to go see in far off places with better water visibility–and perhaps that’s one reason it remained so good for so long.  And, I’ve spent many peaceful nights out there, watching the stars, far from the light loom of shore.  

Today Greenpeace is reporting this:

I’m down at the oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico – or what for now is the Gulf of Mexico. Rick Steiner, a marine conservationist and oil spill expert, flew over the Gulf Wednesday morning and said, “It’s not the Gulf of Mexico any more. It’s the Gulf of Oil.”

   http://members.greenpeace.org/…

There’s more at the link, about the ‘theatre’ of a fake cleanup effort–booms not even being attended by skimmers, and are therefore useless, and so on.  

But, this disaster is taking away something beautiful, that I know so well, unlike for instance Alaska- where I’ve never been.     I have memories of favorite reefs, I’ve had friends die out there, memories of various storms, of nearly dying myself in diving accidents.  I’ve seen waterspouts – up to 5 at one time (friend on another boat got on the VHF said ‘that job at McDonald’s is looking pretty good right now’) , and lightning, rain and fog, and, way offshore, my dog fell off my boat in a storm.   I got him back.  I’ve made love out there. I’ve watched snowy star trek on a 5″ b&w tv. And I’ve watched the shooting stars pass over. I’ve seen where the shrimp boats have dragged their gear across hard bottom or reef tearing it all to hell,  and probably their gear too, but who cares about that. And I’ve pulled up thousands of sponges from deep and shallow water–wool sponge (bath) , yellow sponge (car wash) , grass and finger (tourist shop) .

Here’s a dead, unbleached wool sponge:

The old Greek sponge divers from the gulf who came over from the Mediterranean, when the industry died over there from a ‘blight’ claim that the sponge is the Golden Fleece of the Argonauts, not a sheep’s pelt.  Once you’ve seen the sponge beds, and spent time down there, I can well believe it–you will always be drawn to the sponge, like a baby to a breast.  

Now, that picture of the sponge is of the dead low level creature, a skeleton in fact–I couldn’t find a picture of a live one in the sea anywhere.  But the beauty of live sponges, is something that no former diver ever forgets. I still dream about them at night, even now decades later,  and I’ll never forget the sound of pistol shrimp popping, whenever as I lay deep in the boats, or as I approached the sponge beds. The shrimp live in the sponge, as do sponge crabs (crabs with other species of sponges growing on their backs) , and all sorts of other small critters (edit: including baby octopus, how did I forget them?) .

The live sponges are black (wool), or white/purple (grass), bright red (finger–why anyone would buy a dead finger sponge I have no idea, the live one’s being so much more beautiful) or orange (yellow). The big loggerhead basket sponges aren’t targeted by divers, but are eaten by loggerhead turtles.  And they’re all one of nature’s filters-passing water though, and cleaning it.  And of course any water quality problems destroy them- touch the dead sponge and poof they disintegrate in your hands, and poof no place for all the little critters to hide, no holes for the pistol shrimp to swim through, no sponges for the sponge crab to hide their shell under, the toad fish to bury themselves under.