Since the oil disaster that began on April 20, people are coming to the beach who haven’t popped open an umbrella in months. Regular beachgoers are squeezing more trips into busy weeks. Diehards stay longer in the 100-plus heat index temperatures of the first days of summer, reluctant to end their beach day.
Everyone wants to enjoy the unburied treasure, packing years worth of thinking “I’ll go to the beach next week” into a few short days, just in case the oil spoils it.
Watching a pelican dive into the shallows for a snack is more delightful after seeing its oil-soaked Louisiana cousin struggling in thick, gooey oil.
First Place
Serious Column
Sally Latham Memorial Award
2010
Seeing a dolphin or a manatee peek from the sparkling water once is no longer enough; we linger longer to wait and watch for the next sighting, and the next.
A sea turtle’s tracks are now a mandatory side trip on a brisk shoreline walk, even if the tiny hatchlings will be swimming into an uncertain future.
We marvel at the sun, gazing at its own reflection as it pulls the water up over itself every night in front of the paparazzi on the beach.
Underwater, creatures are coming close to the shoreline, too.
Since April 20, this columnist, raised on Sea Hunt and Jacques Cousteau, has spotted one spotted eagle ray, three barracuda, whole colleges of tarpon and an unidentified long-snouted turtle off Bradenton Beach in knee-deep water, and warned swimmers away from a sailboard-length shark – 10-12 feet long – that they mistook for a manatee in waist-deep water in broad daylight, all fairly unusual.
On June 16, Manatee County lifeguard Colin Schmidt saw a 15-foot hammerhead shark off White Avenue, also somewhat uncommon.
Could they be running from the oil?
“Yes, it is possible that the oil and/or microbial degradation of the oil that is depleting oxygen from the water could be driving marine life,” said Dr. Richard H. Pierce, senior scientist and director of the Center for Ecotoxicology at Mote Marine Laboratory. “We need much more specific evidence to know for sure.”
Of course, that takes money, and no funding is available for that study, he said; the lab’s current priority is to keep its oil-seeking robots in business.
Still, Mote’s Shark Research Center Director, Dr. Robert Hueter, is compiling strange marine life sightings, including 10 whale sharks spotted off Sarasota last week, a rarity.
“People who have lived here 30 years have never seen anything like this. Usually whale sharks come to our waters transiently in ones and twos. This time we had 10 and we stayed with them for four hours,” he said. “We don’t know that the spill is pushing large animals into our waters, but this unusual grouping of whale sharks suggests that we should consider that hypothesis.”
It doesn’t take a scientist to realize that something strange is happening at the beach.
But something else is happening too, one of the few good things to come from the Deepwater Horizon.
The looming threat of the spreading oil spill is making us appreciate the treasures of Anna Maria Island, not just in tourism dollars, but in sand dollars, the currency of our Gulf.
