Gary Gover

Editor:

This morning (June 6) I patrolled the Gulf State Park ocean beach at dawn for signs of overnight sea turtle nesting. The wrack line left by the morning tide contained seaweed, debris and tar. The tar was in pieces from tiny particles up to 4-by-6-inch mats. The density of coin-sized balls was 10 per square foot through the generally 6-foot-wide wrack line. The tar left up on the beach contained a lot of sand, remained on the surface of the sand and sank quickly in sea water. It was very sticky to human skin and spread rapidly. The tar was even stickier to plastics such as bottles and crab trap floats in the wrack line. It was very sticky to steel cans. The tar was not at all visible in the surf.

Cleanup crews were getting started on the beach as the day warmed up. Attention was being paid to their safety and well-being, with a dozen shelters for shade and cool water per mile, plus big fans and an emergency medical crew. A large number of workers were staging for job of removing the tons of contamination by hand from the beach in the heat of the day with high humidity and a threat of thunderstorms.

The large bags of contaminated material gathered the day before on the far west end of the beach were left overnight in the wrack line in reach of the surf.

The tar is mobile, moving under water and attached to floating debris. Cleaning it up is now a slogging, inefficient process, not clearly going to be a success. Coastal enterprise and activity far and wide are clearly at risk. Wildlife of all kinds is clearly at risk.

Fairhope