Beautiful beach, or.....................???

[Celebration]

Ugh. Okay, so when my daughter said she wanted to get married on the beach somewhere near Panama City, Florida over the holidays, I purposely steered her somewhat west of there rather than east. We have had many vacations there over the years so I am attached to the Emerald Coast. The one, two punch to the area was the economy followed by the oil spill. I knew people couldn't swim in the ocean anyway in the winter, so I thought it would be a good idea to help support the area economically. The beaches east of Panama City were not impacted by the gusher. Since the wedding was responsible for several houses being rented, lots of restaurant meals, as well as caterer, rehearsal dinner, etc., the goal was accomplished, albeit on a small scale. Most people seemed to ignore the oil balls on the beaches but to me, it was just heartbreaking. There were birds around but even though I was down there a week, I had very little time to do any photography...........and a lot of it that I did do was more like photojournalism. These are taken in the Seacrest/Seagrove Florida area between Destin and Panama City--

Looks good, huh?





Take a closer look--never saw ANYONE cleaning the beaches--truly a picture IS worth thousand words-- Some of this looks like rat droppings. I hope this stops before people start swimming in the ocean............I wish I had better news to report. This area is famous for pristine white sand. Some people at the wedding claimed they didn't see oil on the beach. How could they miss it?

[elleng]

1. Rat droppings indeed.

Daughter had Spring Break there, before BP disaster.

Congrats on wedding, and for your thoughts for local economy.

[Celebration]

8. the gorgeous beach house we rented

Is for sale! Nice family owns about ten houses, and three of them are for sale. This one used to be the family home in the winter, but this winter they decided to rent it out because it brings in more money than some of their other houses. At this point I just think the overbuilding is more of an issue, as most people (surprisingly) seemed to be ignoring the oil.

There were actually a ton of people down there for New Year's--if you go by the traffic on 30a.

[postatomic]

2. Sad. Quite a difference from the first photo

All the strange bird/fish deaths in Arkansas. When will Mother Earth finally get sick of us and decide it's time for us to go?

[Celebration]

7. yes, the beach looked beautiful

Until you looked closely.

[intheflow]

3. This is so sad.

I'd love to see you post this in GD, but given American's two second attention span it probably wouldn't get much attention. :(

[Celebration]

5. I thought about this

I think I will make a short slideshow and post it to YouTube and then to Political Videos. I'm still in slideshow mode from the rehearsal dinner slideshow I made anyway. I might not put quite as many hours into this one, LOL.

I'll post here after I am finished, too.

BP should be out there cleaning this stuff up every day. Why aren't they?

[intheflow]

10. I can't figure it out either.

I'd like to see them all carted off before the Hague. PM me if/when you put this up in PV, I'll make sure to give it a rec. :hi:

[Celebration]

11. well, I have been looking into this

There are definitely oil balls on the beach, and I have them in the last photo and some of the others, but the pellets are probably waste material from shrimp, which I have never seen on the beaches down there. But apparently conditions are ripe for this.

But these are definitely NOT shrimp pellets:

[Mira]

4. This is a very sad sight. I'm glad for a report from an

unimpeachable source. I'm sure this was rough to see and difficult to photograph.
Thank you for these Celebration.

[Celebration]

6. I had a frown on my face

And was very, very puzzled that people claimed that they saw no oil. Maybe they don't know the difference between a little seaweed and a little oil?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

9. Nothing to see here, move along

The media says everything is fine