09/18/2012 - Bayou La Batre AFTER the Coastal Cleanup

Header image - shoreline in Bayou La Batre AFTER the coastal cleanup. What is in your Bayou La Batre seafood? Piss on Bayou La Batre seafood - Bayou La Batre doesn't care. Enjoy your Cancer.

A little Photoshop fun to better accentuate the reality of this waterway.

This shrimp boat logo (actual logo) sums up Bayou La Batre. "Piss on Bayou La Batre seafood." You might want to find out where your seafood came from before you eat it.

Mouth of Bayou La Batre looking toward the Gulf of Mexico - two days after the coastal cleanup.

There was one crab still shaking in this crab trap and the others were dead. What a waste of life.

My kayak visible on the left should give you perspective of the density of shoreline trash in this Bayou.

This community has publicly allowed their waterway to become severely polluted for the whole world to see. Just image how little they care when it comes to processing your seafood behind closed doors.

Some will say, ah, Isaac put all the trash there. Wrong. Most of the trash has been here for years. The problem is no one is removing it, not even during a Coastal Cleanup Event.

Nice spider lily flower on a industrial property.

This could have been a nice sandpiper photo but it is hard to see the bird for all the trash. That is why there is no kayak outfitter in Bayou La Batre. This shoreline trash is ruining the Bayou's potential kayak tourism.

Kayaking in this waterway makes me sick to my stomach but I had to do it today to show another Bayou La Batre zone coastal cleanup failure. Far as I can see no trash was removed from the western shoreline.

Shoreline covered in plastic. This affects marine life.

Contents of rusting spray cans eventually spill their guts regardless of the content, poisonous or not.

Bayou La Trash looks the way it does because many of the ship building companies like this one are the ones polluting the water. ADEM should fine companies like this and shut down Bayou La Batre until the shoreline is clean (safe) again.

Most shipbuilders use bulkheads so the trash just floats by.

I quit counting how many times I've paddled in Bayou La Batre through a petroleum spill. Basically every time I paddle, there is petroleum on the water somewhere in that Bayou. There are some serious environmental problems and health hazards in Bayou La Trash. The smell of this spill was bad enough to cause me to quickly turn around. It was noxious smelling.

I didn't stick around to investigate the source of this spill because no one gives a shit. Every time I call the National Response Center nothing happens. The seafood capital of Alabama has no money so no one cares. However, if this was BP oil on the surface of Bayou La Batre, the media would be all over this place along with lawyers and people filing fraudulent claims. Mayor Wright is seeking re-election while facing a federal indictment on corruption charges. Bayou La Batre Grant Writer Janey Galbraith was recently found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. Former Bayou La Batre police officer Jason Edwards was arrested for stealing money from his own police department. Corruption apparently runs deep in the Bayou...so I hope BP has good people monitoring where their BP money given under duress is going. BP money certainly hasn't reduced the oil pollution in Bayou La Trash.

That is a computer monitor floating in the water in the background.

Why do I bitch so much about this waterway? The wildlife suffers much from the trash and pollution. Here is a pelican carrying around fishing line caught in its wing with a sinker on the end of it.

The birds in Bayou La Batre today looked like they have been in a war zone. This pelican probably broke its wing to get free from a fishing line. Marine wildlife deserves better than what Bayou La Batre is providing them. Those who care for injured birds could have easily picked up a dozen birds unable to fly in this area.

09/16/2012 - Dog River AFTER the Coastal Cleanup

Header Image. This 2012 Coastal Cleanup in Dog River was yet another example of how annual Clean Up events are incapable of keeping waterways clean. They can't even make a dent in the trash removal.

This new T-Shirt says it all. You get what you tolerate.

Yesterday was the annual Coastal Cleanup. All these photos are taken a day AFTER the cleanup within 1-2 miles of Dog River Park.

Lazy ass fisherman littered Dog River Park in less than 24 hours. Note the worm containers. Solution: New Park Rule - no fishing if there is litter on the ground whether you put it there or not. Get caught fishing with litter nearby on the ground, get charged a $425 fine for littering.

Despite expectations that Dog River residents would clean up their own properties, some did nothing and the litter remains. Volunteers can't just go walking around on private property.

Come kayaking in Dog River where you can get your weed and coffee in the same container.

People pay extra when buying tires and that extra money goes toward removing tires from the environment. Unfortunately, that tax must be a scam because getting rid of tires is almost impossible. Tires line storm water ditches, block storm water pipes, and are filling creek beds. Shame on the people throwing tires out of their car windows and littering the environment.

To a power boater looking at the shoreline of an undeveloped property, from a distance all appears well.

Swapping places, now on the shoreline looking toward Dog River - same place. Yuck! Most undeveloped property shorelines in the trash tidal zone look like this. This is one year's worth of trash because I removed all the trash from here last year.

Why do I constantly bitch about no one removing the pollution along the shorelines? People aren't the only one who use the water and undeveloped shorelines. 

Our drinking water is filtered. Their drinking water is not. If you don't think animals and insects are important, wait until all the bees are dead because of polluted water.

Mosquito bites have been making news due to the diseases they carry. If shoreline litter was removed regularly there would be less mosquitoes because containers full of water like this would be removed.

You would think the coastal cleanup would target Television sets since the cathode ray tubes are hazardous to the environment. You would think environmental groups would have someone to call to get hazards like this removed from the water. And to think, KMB and others want to put radio transmitters on trash and throw it in the water to track where it goes. 

Come kayaking with me, I'll show you where the trash ends up - in the tidal zone traps. Why waste money tracking trash? Use the money to remove it. Document what is removed from where and you will have much better insight into what kind of trash is going where.

Kind of hard to miss seeing this tire. I saw about a hundred tires on today's paddle.

These photos were taken less than one mile away from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management's office. ADEM says piles of litter are not illegal dumps. Well, someone should clean up Dog River and pile all the litter up in ADEM's parking lot. It wouldn't be illegal dumping and ADEM tolerates Mobile doing nothing about shorelines that look like this. Just kidding, don't dump on ADEM. They apparently are sleeping, so don't wake them up.

Scenes like this are sure to bring in the eco-tourists. Hahaha. Actually, I have kayaking friends who absolutely won't put their kayak in Dog River due to trash and raw sewage.

Beautiful homes, trashy shorelines. Lower property values. Someone should sue the City of Mobile. Still ZERO litter traps. Still ZERO people employed to remove Mobile's trash. Most of the trash still there despite another Clean Up.

If 400 volunteers worked 4 hours (assuming they actually worked the full four hours) cleaning the shoreline of Dog River, that would be 1600 worker hours. Those 400 people would accomplish LESS than what one person working full time could do. Why the City of Mobile employs no one removing trash from waterways full is mind boggling.

The trash in these photos will not rot for another 364 days...until the next Dog River Cleanup does not remove it. Plastic does not biodegrade.

02/28/2011 - Around Pinto Island

Launch: Shirley's (US Hwy 90 across from battleship USS Alabama)
Launch Cost: Free
Destination: Mobile River going south around Pinto Island. You can't get all the way around Pinto Island because the upper side is blocked by vegetation.
Distance: 12 miles (round trip)
Paddle time: 3-1/2 hours
Weather: Cloudy, 70 degrees, winds 10-20 mph. Tide rising and current about 1 mph.
GPS Track: To view or download the GPS track of this trip, Click Here.

Header Image

1) Today's destination was over near those buildings on the skyline.

2) Down around the corner of Pinto Island are some massive cranes that move a lot of bulk steel using powerful magnets. The steel is probably headed up Mobile River by barge to the steel plant ThyssenKrupp.

3) When current and wind are going in the same direction, the waves are smaller than if they were opposite. Even though winds were gusting up to 20 mph and there was a small craft advisory, conditions were fine for kayaking in Mobile River.

4) The USS Alabama. Despite its tourist attraction, kayaking around the Battleship north to just past the Hwy 90 bridge can be unusually choppy, rough, and unpredictable. I consider it one of the more dangerous places to kayak in this area.

5) If you have every tried to buy a plane ticket for a flight that leaves out of the Mobile Airport, then you know if you fly from Mobile, you will get definitely get "Poor Faster." This is a takeoff on the Mo Faster ad.

6) For you poor people with snow on the ground, good news - spring green is on the way.

7) A different perspective on the roads used to drive across Mobile Bay.

8) Bet that bird will be in for a surprise when a maintenance person lowers the light housing to replace a bulb.

9) A rather cloudy sunset.

10) Conditions did deteriorate between the Battleship and the Hwy 90 bridge where the wild confused waves with the current stir up a froth. Plus, waves hitting the Battleship bulkhead also cause froth. This is the incoming current froth line.

11) I mentioned a few possibly dangerous areas that can throw you surprises when kayaking the Mobile River loop. Thought a graphic of the approximate location of those areas, shown in red, might help. This is the track from this trip.

There have been times that I paddled all day in wonderful conditions only to approach the above areas in red and was thankful just to get past them without capsizing. It may look like I go kayaking where ever I want when ever I want. This is not true. I do not go kayaking without checking a half dozen different forecasts. I time trips so I pass potentially difficult areas at optimal times.  What is checked are tides, current wind from buoy locations, forecast wind speed and direction from the Aviation forecast, water temperature, marine forecast, current forecast for max ebb and max flood, upstream water levels, and if going into the Gulf, I look at swell forecast. Hope this helps new kayakers. Be safe - wear your life jacket and have both plan A and plan B in case there are problems.