What follows is the description of her participation in the clean up efforts on the Gulf Coast by Carolyn Vetro, a Merchant Marine and a very brave sister Queen and Chronicles subscriber. Her words are illuminating and give a much clearer picture of what is being done than the disingenuous PR pap perpetrated by BP.
 
Pier Head Jump                                       
 
May 2nd started as an unremarkable Sunday. I had been on the beach (mariner term for being out of work) for
2 1/2 months and was staying close to home waiting for a ship. Mid afternoon my phone rang. The captain of the Maine Responder called and asked if I would help sail the vessel to Florida or possibly to the Gulf of Mexico. My usual work is with union deep-sea vessels, but I am on a list to "augment" on the Maine in case there is an emergency.  
 
The Maine was the last east coast responder activated to sail to the Gulf of Mexico to respond to the Deepwater Horizon spill. If I wanted the work I had to get to the boat within a couple hours. Such short notice for a ship job is called a "pier head jump." As it was the weekend, my neighbor was home and drove me to the wharf in Portland, Maine where the vessel is docked. 
 
The Maine Responder is one of about 15 vessels operated by the Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC). This nationwide company and the Responder vessels were a product of the Exxon Valdez accident. The public outrage over lack of preparedness for an accident of any kind resulting in a spill led to the development of plans, training, equipment, ships and barges. The Responder vessels carry long sections of oil boom, a small boat to tow the boom, a skimmer and other oil spill clean up equipment. 

I was told I would be needed only for a few days. As things worked out, one of the permanent crew had to go home, as his wife was due to deliver their baby, so I was able to stay on board for several weeks and work at the spill site.
 
We worked at the site where the Deepwater Horizon Platform had sunk with the remains of 11 workers who were unable to escape the explosion, fire and sinking. We did not have TV or newspapers and very little radio reception. Anyone ashore saw and heard more news than we did. (We were the news.) 
 
From my perspective, the command was disorganized. They would call all the skimming vessels and tell them to go to the same location from different directions (which does not work!) instead of having vessels follow each other and covering territory more efficiently without the risk of playing bumper boats.
 
I saw very little Coast Guard presence. Once in a while a patrol boat or helicopter would be in the area. A large commercial supply-type vessel was the command boat and generally made everyone annoyed at their directions and the way they addressed everyone. A Navy officer wannabe called everyone "gentlemen." (No comment...) There were times when we had oil collected in the boom and they would tell us to drop it and go somewhere else without skimming what we had. 
 
Dispersants emulsified the oil and made it nearly impossible to skim some days. The use of dispersants appears to be a cosmetic fix. Some days the command had us in areas with oil slick ribbons where we could see fish, porpoise and birds who would be doomed within days. Other days we were in heavy oil and could skim successfully. Some of the skimmers would report collecting so much oil they would have to discharge to a barge every other day. Our Captain decided decanting (letting the oil separate out of the water, then discharging the water), was more efficient, so when we went to a barge roughly once a week, we discharged oil, not water.
 

There were thousands of what I believe were man of war jelly fish with tall balloon-like sails and tentacles 5 to 10 feet long caught up in the boom and oil pocket. I know at least one contractor who became tangled in tentacles when they brought the boom in one night. He had a very sore arm for a couple days. 
 
There was a waterspout one evening. A waterspout looks like a tornado on the water. The next day it rained and the entire vessel including the bridge deck was covered with a rainbow sheen. The air was filled with fumes in the oily patches. The water at the site was covered with a sickening green/purple/yellow sheen as far as the eye could see. The water looked like a strange substance from another planet.       
 
We had MSRC Responder personnel from various ports who were in charge of the boom, skimmer and boom boat. The contract laborers who were the Responder assistants were mostly from the Gulf of Mexico states. Their stories of Hurricane Katrina experiences were chilling. Some of them lost everything. Now they had another disaster to deal with. They were kind fellows who resembled an ice hockey team, missing lots of teeth and one eye.


One man was on parole and apparently had an epiphany. He was the best worker. He was referred to "as the brains of the group" and was in charge of the others for most of the time I was there. I rather enjoyed these people as shipmates. They were "southern gentlemen" (of sorts) and always offered to help with whatever I was working on and were always respectful, polite and funny. When I met one, he said to me in a classic southern dialect, "Ma'am, you must be a Yankee, you have an accent." There was a very civil "war" consisting of taunting and teasing between the "Yanks" and the "Rebs" especially around the subject of northern versus southern cooking and seafood.
   
When the permanent crew member I was working for returned to the vessel, I had to leave. Also, the Responder vessels are not meant to be lived on for more than a few weeks at a time and the regular crew was beginning their rotation. As the Responder ships had to stay on scene, crew boats transferred personnel the 50 odd miles to and from Venice, Louisiana. Arrangements had been made to have us ride a crew boat to Venice, stay overnight, then fly out of New Orleans the next day. When the crew boat arrived, the first challenge was transferring crew. The joining crew had to jump down to the Maine's deck and those of us departing had to clamber over tire fenders on the side of the crew boat. All I could think was Please God, don't let me fall! 
 
The crew boat mate was an excellent assistant. Sea bags (luggage) were transferred and we thought we were on our way. The crew boat zipped around the site to numerous boats, transferring supplies and people. It then traveled north to other response vessels closer to shore. It was well past dark and it became obvious there would be no hotel stay that night. The crew boat captain and crew were friendly and allowed me to visit their bridge.  We had a nice chat and I left the bridge to find a seat for the rest of the trip. At approximately 0600 (6:00 AM to landlubbers) we arrived in Venice. The Maine Responder captain was able to set up another ride to the New Orleans airport. 
 
Now that I can read, hear and see the news again, I can only hope that the well can be permanently capped, the clean up finished and our Gulf Coast citizens can get their lives back.
 
Carolyn Vetro, ME
 
Thank you so much, Carolyn for all of your efforts on behalf of Mother Earth and Mami Wata. You make us proud!


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