by Agence France-Presse.
Watch Philippe Cousteau Jr., grandson of legendary ocean
explorer Jacques Cousteau, dive into the oily Gulf of Mexico on ABC’s Good Morning America:
Jacques Cousteau would have been “horrified” by the devastation being
wrought by a huge Gulf of Mexico oil spill, his grandson said after diving down
into the seas.
“There’s a
chemical dispersant/oil mixture that is now … over vast areas of the Gulf and
as we feared it’s not concentrated at the surface,” Philippe Cousteau Jr.
told CNN, adding “this absolutely is a nightmare.”
“We were
about 15 to 20 feet down and it was dispersed into smaller and smaller
particles throughout the water column in these billowing clouds that were just
circling us, encompassing us in this toxic soup. It was very, very
alarming.”
Oil has been
spewing into the seas since an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig,
just off the Louisiana coast, and the spreading slick is seeping into the
state’s fragile marshlands.
“I know
that my father and grandfather would have been doing this if they were alive
and that they would have been just as horrified by what they saw as I
was,” Cousteau said in a post on his blog.
During the
“gruelling” dive, which required three weeks or preparation, Cousteau
and his team wore full hazmat diving suits and heavy hard-hat helmets weighing
some 30 pounds.
He said as the
team was underway, “wave after wave of oil/chemical dispersant mix washed
over us.”
“This was
one of the most terrible experiences of my life seeing first-hand what this oil
spill looks like under the water and knowing that this contamination is
spreading over hundreds of miles.”
And as BP on Wednesday readied a new bid to
cap the leak, Cousteau warned, “Even if they do manage to cut off the oil
tomorrow, the oil that has escaped will spread, following currents as far as
the Arctic Circle via the Gulf Stream, wreaking havoc along the way. I can only
hope that we learn from this and start to truly take the kind of drastic action
necessary to begin the decades-long road to recovery.”
Related Links:
Will BP take responsibility, or squeeze profits from Gulf spill?
Oil rig workers missed ‘very large abnormality’ before explosion
What if the oil spill just can’t be fixed?
