Back to the Gulf on Thursday. Thanks to everyone who has made these trips possible. I have great conviction that it's really important to go and I am so grateful to have been able to work on this project. It's been a little bit of a struggle because I thought that I was going to be able to be home this whole summer and I've been home for just a little bit. I'm going to be missing some family stuff here to go back for the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival, which is upsetting and was a difficult decision but I feel very strongly that this is a very important event, a long standing celebration of community and industry that's coming at an interesting juncture, knowing the well is capped and the relief involved, and the anxiety of beginning the wait to see the full long term impact of the catastrophe.

Gulf Oil Plume Is Not Breaking Down Fast, Research Says
By Justin Gillis and John Collins Rudolf


"New research confirms the existence of a huge plume of dispersed oil deep in the Gulf of Mexico and suggests that it has not broken down rapidly, raising the possibility that it might pose a threat to wildlife for months or even years."


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Scientists report undersea oil plume stretching 21 miles from BP spill site By David A. Fahrenthold and Kimberly Kindy


"News of the plume was announced Thursday afternoon by researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. In late June, they found an invisible cloud of oil droplets as tall as a 65-story building and more than a mile wide.

Since then, they said, all that oil was unlikely to have been consumed by the gulf's crop of hydrocarbon-eating microbes. These work quickly in the warm waters near the surface, but far more slowly in the cold, deep region where the plume was found.

"Our data would predict that the plume would still be there now," said Benjamin Van Mooy, a Woods Hole researcher."

On The Beach Studio 360 Interview


Click above to check out an interview I did about On The Beach for Studio 360 in NY.
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen is a weekly radio show about arts and pop culture, from PRI and WNYC.

Great news! U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk

"A government report finds that about 26 percent of the oil released from BP’s runaway well is still in the water or onshore in a form that could, in principle, cause new problems."

That means there's only 53.3 MILLION gallons of oil in the gulf that could, in principle, be a problem.


Granted, in the same article-

“I think we don’t know yet the full impact of this spill on the ecosystem or the people of the gulf,” Dr. Lubchenco said.

Among the biggest unanswered questions, ( Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) said, is how much damage the oil has done to the eggs and larvae of organisms like fish, crabs and shrimp. That may not become clear for a year or longer, as new generations of those creatures come to maturity."

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Graphic from the NYT 8/4/10

BP claims office

On The Beach Interview With Tyler Green

Check it out!
Thanks to Tyler for interviewing me.

Spill Is Biggest Accidental Oil Release, New U.S. Data Show


205 million gallons of oil

1.8 million, minimum, gallons of dispersant

THANKS TO ALL WHO FINANCIALLY CONTRIBUTED TO "ON THE BEACH"

Janet Goldwater
Robert Macneill
Ilene Baker
Stephen James Millner
Rosalind Fox Solomon
Maura Ellen White
Maritza C Ranero
Aaron Wickenden
Amy Sadao
Suzette Brown
Michelle
Eddie Geisingerr
Bo Bartlett
Joanne Greenbaum
Rikki Reich
Meredith L Malone
Christopher w Griffith
Andrea Shemeley
Albert Yee
Jacqueline van Rhyn
Abigail Guay
Erin
Katharine DeShaw
Wayne
Richard Michael Torchia
Sally A Stein
Mr. Michael Alexander Macfeat
Pam Farrell
Amy Szczepaniak
Tiffany Jones
Frank Sherlock
Evelyn
Adam Robbins
Gabriel
Yasha B Wallin
Xtine
Wendy Olsoff
Brad Daly
Pilar Berguido
Liz Kuball
Amber Straus
Mel Trittin
Marianne Bernstein
J Zarro
Kelly O'Brien
Christopher H Paquette
Katy, Jason and Julien Friedland
Peter Medvin
Diana Norton
JPS
Debra Dysart
Walter Wlodarczyk
David DiSabatino
John Gordon
Jason L Lazarus
Amada Cruz
Brae Lawren Howard
Susie Anderson
Kyle Cassidy
Julia Bryan-Wilson
Carl Gunhouse
Neal Anderson
Julie Courtney
Zack Avshalomov
L Lee Alter
Pew Center for Arts and Heritage


Without your support, this project wouldn't have happened, these photos wouldn't have been made. As the catastrophe moves out of the public eye, I am certain that it was important to go down and make these photos. I can't thank all of you enough.


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Working on ordering the photos, but I'm going to stop work on this for 2 weeks while I work on Brighton. I need a little time away from them so I can figure out what the hell I'm doing.