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.