Oil Disaster Show and Benefit

Well, my life is returning back to a semblance of normalcy after having been working a million hours a day, and not eating or sleeping to get ready for my first show at the Gallery and at the nearby Matunuck Oyster Bar. The show was last Wednesday, on the one year anniversary of the oil spill and featured photography by myself, Holt Webb and Shawn Carey. All the photos were framed in reclaimed wood and stained in actual BP oil, some of it Cypress that I brought back from Louisiana. We held a silent auction with a lot of support from local Rhode Island businesses and all proceeds from sales of photos and the auction went to charitable causes.

When I was down in the Gulf I wanted to do more to help the local fishermen than I had been able to do, so I asked a couple of locals whom I had grown to respect very much during my time down there who needed more help then they were getting. Karen Hopkins of Dean Blanchard Seafood and Buggy Vegas, owner of the Bridgeside Marina suggested that any efforts go to help Brian Zito and Donny Willard.

Both Donny and Brian are lifelong shrimpers, and both of them were excluded from BP's vessels of opportunity program which was meant to put out of work fishermen to work cleaning up the oil. In reality, the oil was mostly sprayed and sunk, and fishermen were routinely sent away from the oil rather than pick it up. Anyway, both of these guys were ready and willing to work, but BP thought that their boats weren't suitable for the job, so they never got the chance. Instead lots of recreational fishermen who didn't even live on the gulf full time were put to work. In a phone conversation last week with Donny, he said that although he has turned in three years of records to BP showing lost income he has received but a fraction of what is owed to him, and he has since lost his home and is now living in a post-Katrina FEMA trailer. WHen I left the Gulf last year, the feds had opened the waters for shrimping, but neither Brian or Donny would eat what was coming out of the Gulf themselves, so they didn't feel right bringing it to market.

Other beneficiaries of the event are the Waterkeepers Alliance's Save our Gulf campaign, and Save The Bay, Rhode Island. So far, we have raised over $1500 to be disbursed between Donny, Brian, Save The Bay and the Waterkkepers. Pretty cool. It may not save the world, but it might buy some groceries, or make a truck payment, or get some testing done, or help monitor the environment here in Rhode Island. I'm in the process of getting the unsold photos up on eBay to try and generate some more funds for these guys and I'll let you know when that process is complete.

I want to thank everyone who came out to show support and remember what happened just one year ago. The Gulf is still suffering as are the people and communities that depend upon its health for their very sustenance. I especially want to thank Perry Raso of the Matunuck Oyster Bar, and Dave Prescott of Save The Bay for helping to bring it all together. I am broker than broke, and I need to thank from the bottom of my heart Tom Sayers and Shawn Carey for getting my images printed, and to Images Design of Wakefield, RI for their last minute save to print my two most important images. Narragansett Beer also really stepped up to the plate to help out with libations and some goodies for the auction. I also want to thank Crazy Burger and Bill Krul Photography of Narraganset, RI and the Alternative Food Co-op, Birdwatcher's Natureview, Food For Thought, All That Matters, SaltPond Pottery, Silvertides Jewelry, Rising Designs Jewelry, Mary Bouvier Massage, The Reynolds Barn Cheese folks all from South Kingstown, RI and lastly, Sevenply Surf and Skate from Westerly, RI all for donating great stuff for the silent auction. If I forgot anyone, I'll be birdwatching alone tomorrow evening at Trustom Pond, so you can ambush me and beat me up if you want!

After building all of the frames, I had to stain them with a BP oil/mineral spirit mixture. They were then coated in polyurethane to lock in the nasty toxins.

Checking out some of the stuff at the Oyster Bar

The Main Wall at BirdSong Gallery

And some more!

A Northern Gannet

In two weeks I will be showing some photography from the Gulf Oil Disaster at my Gallery and at the Matunuck Oyster Bar. From now until then I'll be posting images from the show here, I guess.
This is a Northern Gannet from May 23rd on Grand Terre Island, just east of Grand Isle, Louisiana.

The Northern Gannet

The Northern Gannet, Morus bassanus, is an amazing bird. Many non-birders have never seen the likes of this thing, as they usually ply the winds and water just out of view for the landlubber. In fact, as I was taking these photos, one of the guys on the boat asked me, "what is that, some kind of female seagull?" Clearly we need to re-engauge our relationship with nature. Here are a couple of photos of Gannets that I took last week, on my last trip on the lobster boat. Sorry I've been blowing the blogging thing yet again, but not any more. I pledge to blog every othah day for evah! The BirdSong Diaries is gonna get old fast!

Gannets were one of the most affected birds of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, as they winter and forage throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Though many were on their way to breeding colonies in northern Canada when the rig blew, a lot of younger birds remained behind to enjoy the bounty of the Louisiana Coast throughout their first year of life. Instead, they dove on pogies and surfaced with a sticky goo all over their plumage, and they died grizzly deaths out on the ocean, unable to thermoregulate or forage. Since there was NO effort to search for, count, or survey for seabirds in the first two months of the disaster, the world will NEVER know the actual toll taken on these guys.
Gannets are known for their spectacular dives. They will often plummet from heights of 30 feet or more onto schools of herring below, and actually use their wings to swim after fish as they rocket through the water. This one is wheeling around, just before a dive.





Northern Gannets are relatives of the Blue-footed Booby, the comical bird popularized by Darwin and Kurt Vonnegut for their goofy courtship rituals. Gannets have similar courtship and mating displays. They are long-lived birds with amazing survival strategies.