Now, when Americans think of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, they likely envision an oil-soaked pelican. Yet here it was, once again a symbol of sacrifice in "the worst environmental disaster in US history," as US President Barack Obama described the incident in a prime-time address. The bird had been removed from the endangered species list only a few months before the disaster, in November 2009. During times of famine, the mother pelican pecked at her body to feed her kin, according to legend. Under French and Spanish colonialism, the settlers of Louisiana were officially Roman Catholic, and in historical Catholic tradition, the pelican is associated with self-sacrifice. The brown pelican is treasured as Louisiana's state bird, not only because it is native to the state, but also because of different symbolic, historical and religious connotations. But there's more here than meets the eye. With its Brobdingnagian bill and lithe neck, the pelican is not the obvious choice for a galvanising symbol. "It's difficult to describe the feelings of helplessness that a person feels when they see wildlife caught up in the middle of an environmental disaster," McNamee says. But he was not the unluckiest party on the island that was the wildlife, thrashing 10ft (3m) away from a future-Pulitzer Prize winner and his camera.īefore him, a brown pelican was baptised in the Gulf's backwash of petroleum and Corexit, a toxic chemical meant to break up the oil. With petroleum malodour lodged in his nose and the early morning sun on his back, McNamee, cemented in the swamp for 30 minutes, was snapping photos of the spill's aftermath. McNamee was starting another 14-hour day, working to illustrate the depth and breadth of the crisis. When the world first learned about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Win McNamee, chief photographer for Getty Images, was stuck thigh-deep in pluff mud, an umber quicksand-like miasma, on East Grand Terre Island, Louisiana. At its largest, the oil spill covered over 15,000 sq miles (39,000 sq km) of the ocean,according to an environmental damage assessment conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Oil and natural gas uncontrollably burst into one of the planet's most productive ecosystems for nearly three months. The number of other casualties – including marine mammals, sea turtles, birds, fish and invertebrates – were countless, and several species are still experiencing new health consequences. The ignition killed 11 people aboard and injured 17. Two days later, the rig capsized and sank into a valley in the continental shelf. On 20 April 2010, the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded after a surge of natural gas blasted through its concrete core, spilling 795 million litres (210 million gallons) of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Louisiana.
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