Florida's Blasting Cap For A Double Dip Recession? Oil Slick from Ongoing Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe On The Way To The Florida Keys

(Images scooped from the Big Picture Blog's: "Oil spill approaches Louisiana coast")


Headlines from around the world on the unfolding Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe:


Oil Spill To Hit Florida Keys: Will Hit Loop Current Within 24 Hours

GULFPORT, Miss. — Scientists say the Gulf oil spill could get into the what's called the Loop Current within a day, eventually carrying oil south along the Florida coast and into the Florida Keys.

Nick Shay, a physical oceanographer at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, said Monday once the oil enters the Loop Current, it likely will end up in the Keys and continue east into the Gulf Stream.

Shay says the oil could affect Florida's beaches, coral reefs, fisheries and ecosystem within a week.

Note to long time readers of this blog: this environmental disaster is the talk of the town (Key West). Can you imagine what will happen to our economy when fishing, jet-skiing, scuba diving, kite surfing, paddle boarding, sunbathing and swimming, etc., are all adversely affected by large sheens and globs of oil washing up on our beaches?



For North Florida fishermen, passion and livelihood at stake

PERDIDO KEY -- Paul Redman Sr. has made a living off the water since he was a teenager, first as a crabber then as a commercial fisherman.

The captain had just returned from a six-day trip where he brought back 2,100 pounds of reef fish, when the rig in the Gulf of Mexico collapsed, causing a massive oil spill that has come to haunt this part of Florida.

With a 10-day federal ban on recreational and commercial fishing, Redman is out of business for now, just as the season begins. From Pensacola Beach to Panama City, the sting of a massive oil spill almost 100 miles away made landfall, restricting fishing in federal waters from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle.

``Zero. Zero. Zero. I am sitting here stuck with a three-man crew who have families and house notes,'' said Redman, 59, who operates the Jim-n-i, a 40-foot snapper vessel. ``I have been trying to figure out a way for us to go fishing to make a living but I haven't come up with anything yet. I invested 30 years of my life in the Gulf and now it's covered in oil.''

More than 6,800 square miles of federal fishing areas in the Gulf of Mexico were closed Sunday, robbing an industry of its livelihood. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued the ban as a public safety measure to prevent possibly tainted seafood from reaching the market.

Readers of this blog know commercial and recreational fishing in the Florida Keys has never returned to what it once was since the double whammy of the Great Recession and Hurricane Wilma. Now with the threat of an uncontrolled oil volcano still spreading a giant toxic amoeba across the Gulf of Mexico to the Loop Current, Florida fishermen south of the Panhandle are glum.

There are not enough oil booms in existence to stop this spreading into the Keys. And no matter how many days we might see fishing banned, nobody is going to want to eat fish or shellfish taken from the waters surrounding the Keys anytime soon after the oil hits our waters.

Can you imagine what this will do to fishing fleets everywhere down here? Here's how it is affecting Panhandle commercial fishermen already:

Although the ban is only for 10 days right now, if you talk to the fishermen, this is only the first step of what is likely to kill the season, roughly from May to September.

``That ban is the precursor of what is to come,'' said Paul Redman Jr., president of the Pensacola Charter Boat Association and the son of a commercial fishermen. ``This could economically collapse our area. We don't have big plants around here or other huge industries. Fishing is our Disney World. It's all we have.''

The ban sent a ripple of panic throughout the Panhandle fishing industry, grounding some fishermen to their docks and driving others to look for gold in the waters outside the restricted areas.

For three decades, Redman has fished across the Gulf of Mexico, up to 110 miles west of the Florida coast, mostly for Vermillion snapper, pink snapper and amberjack. On a good run, he and the crew crew would bring back a bounty of 3,500 pounds -- the first 1,000 pounds needed just to break even -- that would eventually make it to restaurants and seafood markets as far north as New York.

But in a business this specialized, there isn't always a Plan B.

``I spent Monday going through my Rolodex trying to find other fisheries that me and the crew could work with,'' said Redman, whose boat is docked at Perdido Bay Seafood. ``I didn't have much luck.''

Mike Carden, captain of the 80-foot Daytona, was in a race against time Monday. Docked at Panama City Marina in St. Andrew Bay, Carden's deckhands hurried to stock up while Carden used his onboard computer to check the Gulf's currents.

``My whole thing is to get out in front of the oil,'' said Carden, who watched the Deep Water Horizon rig burn from about 30 miles away. ``If I get locked in here, I'm done. All the little boats that can't go nowhere else, they're not going to be able to fish.''

Carden, a seasoned captain of 40 years, expects St. Andrew Bay to be shut down within the next two days.

``The damage has already been done,'' Carden said. ``If they cap it off now, it doesn't matter. We're refugees from the oil spill now. For this industry, this is pretty grim. It looks to shut down the whole industry, domestic anyway.''

And it's not just the commercial fishermen. Think about all the charter boats at Charter Boat Row which don't go out on beautiful days. I saw this firsthand last week when I and two co-workers went out fishing on the Gulfstream IV on Tuesday. First of all, "tourist season" is coming to an end. Secondly, hurricane season is about to begin. Lastly, the threat of oil simply kills what few people may have wanted to go out for a four hour excursion. Add these three components together and we could very well enter a Double Dip Great Recession in Florida.

The Herald article tells what is happening North of here:

As a band of storms passed through Pensacola Beach, Captain Mike Newell looked out at the emptiness of the 31-slip marine where his 46-foot boat named Miss Marisa, is docked. He would like to blame it on the rain, but knows better.

``My phone has been ringing and they all are saying the same thing. They are canceling because of this oil mess,'' said Newell, a Vietnam vet who owns a sportfishing charter business. ``I don't know how we are going to through this season.''

Had the rig not blew a leak two weeks ago, Newell would have been running his six-passenger boat out 20 or 30 miles off the coast.

Out the 15 excursions he had booked -- priced at $900 to $1,500 each -- eight have already canceled.

``I would much rather have a hurricane come through here,'' he said. ``The way this is going, we will go out of business, but slowly.''

I'll suggest this again:

End of Tourist Season + Hurricane Season + Oil Amoeba Hitting The Keys = Double-Dip Great Recession?

Stay tuned.