Adventures of the Blue-eyed Bear

Live Long and Prosper Little Dudes! The Blue-eyed Bear helps with Sea Turtle relocation.

The Blue-eyed Bear has made her way along the Gulf beaches to the Florida Panhandle. There she is helping with a desperate project to save a generation of sea turtles from sure death in the oily gulf water. The US Fish and Wildlife Service is heading this project to move some 70,000 turtle eggs from the Alabama and Florida beaches and will transport them to the east coast of Florida for release. The B-E Bear thinks she can help locate turtle nests with her supper sensitive Bear nose. She will also make her way to the east coast to help with the release of the little turtle hatchlings. Most of the nests are thought to belong to loggerhead turtles. You know the turtles that starred in the movie “Saving Nemo”. These turtles can live to be 150 years old!

The B-E bear suggests that all humans can help by adopting a sea turtle and supporting the work of Sea Turtle Conservancy at conserveturtles.org This is a Galveston, Florida based organization that was founded by Dr. Archie F. Carr formerly of the University of Florida. Carr was a biologist and conservationist and an expert in sea turtles. He died in 1987 but his legacy of research and protection of turtles through education and conservation live on with this organization.

The Blue-eyed Bear is burning to know how Humans think they can handle an oil spill in the Arctic Ocean!

Today is the 71th day that oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. As bad as this Gulf oil spill is the Blue-eyed Bear wants everyone to imagine what would happen if there was a Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Arctic Ocean. Here are a few thoughts if you find it hard pressed to do this imagining. The arctic ocean is generally covered with ice for most of the year so oil coming to the surface would be stuck below the ice and spread out  beneath it.  Skimming or burning of oil does not seem possible. Sea mammals such as narwals, walrus,  and  seals swimming below the ice would die and or have little possibility of recovery or rehabilitation. How do you clean the oil off a narwal? The Oil companies probably would use dispersants  heavily with little idea of what effect that would have on the food chain. Once the sea mammals die from lack of food the bears will die as well.  One thing in the oil companies favor is there won’t be a lot of Humans around to see the devastation of an Arctic spill. And we know that some Alaskans such as former Senator  Ted Stevens think the arctic is just a wasteland so Humans probably won’t be much concerned.

The B-E Bear thinks an Arctic oil spill is a nightmare scenario. So she strongly supports the 6 month moratorium on deep water drilling. And in some places like the Arctic it should never be tried. Humans need to step back from the brink and get their act together. They can no longer trust the oil companies when they say safety is the No 1 priority. If that were so the oil companies would voluntarily shut their deep water rigs down until they can assure their technology works. The oil companies in Norway did shut down their deep water rigs. Their scared and Americans should be too. There are some real problems with the first and last line of defense against a spill the Blow Out Preventers. It seems they are finicky pieces of equipment and have be known to fail as much as 45% of the time. And the oil companies have known for a long time that there are problems with this device especially in the rigors of the  deep ocean. For some interesting and really scary reading go to the New York Times June 20th investigative report entitled “Regulators Failed to Address Risk in Oil Rig Fail-Safe Device. If Judge Feldman read this article I don’t understand how he could have found the moratorium on drilling an arbitrary action!