Gulf oil spill: National seashore islands hit by oil

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National Park Service officials are responding to tar balls and mats of oil washing up along the shoreline in parts of Gulf Islands National Seashore, a string of barrier islands off the coasts of Mississippi and Florida.

Joan Anzelmo of the park service on Sunday confirmed impacts on Horn and Petit Bois Islands in Mississippi, Perdido Key in the Florida panhandle, and Ft. Pickens and Opal Beach in Pensacola.
“Currently all of the national parks on the gulf shore are open to the public; that’s the good news,” Anzelmo said. “We’re preparing for impacts on eight national parks along the gulf shore. Right now, tar balls are scattered and random. We do not yet have oiled water or oil washing on the shore.”

Nesting birds are dug in on the shorelines of all of the islands, presenting a challenge to cleanup workers who have been scooping up oil gobs by hand since Tuesday.

There are 225 people working to clean Perdido Key, according to Katie Lawhon of the park service. She said protective booms are only effective behind the islands, on the landward side, because of strong currents and wave action.

The two Mississippi islands are federally designated wilderness, which, among other things, restricts motorized access. On Petit Bois, park staff are using small tracked vehicles to move equipment around. Lawhon said she was on Petit Bois on Wednesday and saw 2¼ miles of shoreline hit by oil.

Louie Miller of the Sierra Club in Mississippi said Petit Bois and Horn Islands are all the more precious because, along with a small tract of forest land, they represent the only wilderness in the state.
“That’s it; that’s all we’ve got,” he said. “Those islands are unique to the northern gulf and in pristine condition.”

Petit Bois is one of the last undeveloped barrier islands in the gulf or Atlantic.

--Julie Cart, reporting from from New Orleans