LOUISIANA : IF FISH SMELLS GOOD, I GUESS YOU CAN SELL IT !!!

Joe Shepard, administrator of Louisiana’s fisheries division, said state officials acted after analysis of approximately 500 samples of fish, crabs, oysters and shrimp from near shore indicated that they posed no health threat.

State officials are nonetheless urging fishermen to use common sense and to “smell and examine catch closely to ensure that there are no obvious oil or chemical residues.”

TURTLE EGGS ARE TO BE MOVED IN AN EFFORT TO ESCAPE OIL.

MIAMI:

In an unprecedented plan to save wildlife, volunteers will move tens of thousands of turtle eggs from oil-soaked beaches along the Gulf of Mexico to safety on Florida's Atlantic coast.

The eggs, which could number about 70,000, will be collected by hand, placed in special containers and driven in temperature-controlled trucks from mid-July.

''A plan like this is absolutely unprecedented and it would not be the choice of our scientists,'' said Patricia Behnke, of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

In New Orleans, the Coast Guard and BP reached a settlement with environmental groups over protecting endangered sea turtles against the dangers of controlled burns.

Three environmental groups - the Centre for Biological Diversity, the Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Animal Defence League - had sued in federal court, charging that oil spill responders had taken inadequate precautions.

Under the settlement, the Coast Guard will convene a group of scientists to determine how best to ensure that no endangered sea turtles die during controlled burns.

''Sea turtles are already suffering catastrophically from the oil spill and it would be outrageous to add insult to injury by burning them alive in the spill clean-up effort,'' said Kieran Suckling of the Centre for Biological Diversity. ''It's a no-brainer to put sea turtle observers on the clean-up boats and whisk the turtles out of the oil pools before they're set on fire.''

''We've agreed to meet to work out the terms to make sure the turtles are protected,'' Jason Burge, a lawyer for the environmental groups said.

BP SUED FOR BURNING TURTLES ALIVE IN THE GULF.

Animal welfare groups are suing BP for burning endangered sea turtles and are asking a US court to stop the oil giant's "controlled burns" on the Gulf of Mexico spill.

The lawsuit filed on Wednesday says BP is violating the Endangered Species Act and other laws with their "controlled burns" in the Gulf of Mexico.

The complainants, Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), Centre for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network and Animal Legal Defence Fund, have asked the federal court for a temporary restraining order to stop all burning activities "until ... mechanisms are implemented that will prevent any additional sea turtles from being burned alive."

"It is horrifying that these innocent creatures whose habitat has already been devastated by the oil spill are now being burned alive," AWI president Cathy Liss told the court in Louisiana.

Containment efforts put in place since a BP-leased offshore oil rig exploded April 20 unleashing the worst oil spill in US history include "controlled burns", in which oil is gathered by ship-towed floating booms and set on fire.

"Endangered sea turtles, including the Kemp's ridley, one of the rarest sea turtles on Earth, are caught in the gathered oil and unable to escape when the oil is set ablaze," the animal welfare groups said.

They said some 430 sea turtles from endangered species have perished so far in the oil spill.

"While cleaning up the catastrophic oil spill is critically important, so too is doing it in a way which doesn't destroy wildlife in a flagrantly unlawful manner," said Liss.

The groups said BP should remove all turtles from the oil gathered for a controlled burn before it is set on fire.

THE COAST GUARD BUSTED SHRIMPERS IN GULF

The Coast Guard returned 30,000 pounds of shrimp back to the Gulf of Mexico after seizing the seafood from shrimpers that allegedly scooped them up from oil-tainted waters.


The Coast Guard Cutter Tornado busted some shrimp boats in the Gulf of Mexico.


USCG The Coast Guard Cutter Tornado busted some shrimp boats in the Gulf of Mexico.
Two vessels — the Lady Monica and La Borrachita — had been fishing in an area closed by the feds due to the oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon, the Coast Guard said.

Keeping the supply of seafood from the Gulf of Mexico safe is big challenge. The Coast Guard Cutter Tornado seized the shrimp Sunday, after boarding the boats 35 nautical miles south of Terrebonne Bay.

We were curious to know if any of the shrimp were checked for contamination. Nope, a Coast Guard spokesman told us. None were tested, he said, because they weren't allowed to be harvested in the first place.

OK.

One other thing, we asked, being naive about shrimping: Were the shrimp still alive when they were dumped back into the Gulf? Yes, they were, the Coast Guard spokesman said.

So maybe we'll see them again someday.

THE U.S. ALLOWED DRILLING WITHOUT NEEDED PERMITS

The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists.

Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.

Under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Minerals Management Service is required to get permits to allow drilling where it might harm endangered species or marine mammals.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is partly responsible for protecting endangered species and marine mammals. It has said on repeated occasions that drilling in the gulf affects these animals, but the minerals agency since January 2009 has approved at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic blasting projects and 346 drilling plans. Agency records also show that permission for those projects and plans was granted without getting the permits required under federal law.

“M.M.S. has given up any pretense of regulating the offshore oil industry,” said Kierán Suckling, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group in Tucson, which filed notice of intent to sue the agency over its noncompliance with federal law concerning endangered species. “The agency seems to think its mission is to help the oil industry evade environmental laws.”

Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Minerals Management Service, said her agency had full consultations with NOAA about endangered species in the gulf. But she declined to respond to additional questions about whether her agency had obtained the relevant permits.

Federal records indicate that these consultations ended with NOAA instructing the minerals agency that continued drilling in the gulf was harming endangered marine mammals and that the agency needed to get permits to be in compliance with federal law.

Responding to the accusations that agency scientists were being silenced, Ms. Barkoff added, “Under the previous administration, there was a pattern of suppressing science in decisions, and we are working very hard to change the culture and empower scientists in the Department of the Interior.”