Pictures from Mexico

Mangrove shoreline facing the Gulf of Mexico just south of Isla Arenas, Campeche, at Luchukum, where a potential Ixtoc I tar mat was found on 6 July 2010.

Landing the panga in the dense red mangrove shoreline near Luchukum where we looked for Ixtoc I tar, 6 July 2010.

Ixtoc I (?) thin, weathered tar mat among the roots of a red mangrove tree at Luchukum, 6 July 2010.

Cut away piece of Ixtoc I (?) tar mat from ground of red mangrove jungle floor near Luchukum, 6 July 2010.

Interview with Jose Chay, 74, a long-time fisherman in Celestun, Yucatan, and CINVESTAV marine scientist Sara Morales (interpreter, left), 7 July 2010.

Interviewee Eliodoro Carmal Couoh, 77, long-time fisherman from Celestun, Yucatan, who now works for CONANP, the national commission for protected areas at Celestun, 7 July 2010.

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Mark Schrope and I met up at 8AM at the Casa del Balam and headed for CINVESTAV to pick up our interpreter Sara Morales. Sara is a former MS student of Jorge Herrera at CINVESTAV, and she currently works for him on several of his long term coastal ecology projects in the northern Yucatan.

Sara and Jorge had made arrangements for us with Victor Manuel Canul of the Ducks Unlimited field station in Celestun to speak with some local fishermen. Celestun is a small, but growing, fishing village due west of Merida on the coast. It has a beautiful mangrove lined lagoon to the east and nice shelly, sandy beaches to the west on the Gulf of Mexico. It is famous for large populations of ducks in the fall and winter and numerous flamingos in the summer.

Jose Chay, 74, had vivid memories of the spill, noting that it permanently killed all of the oysters and clams, the same thing we heard in Isla Arenas yesterday. He said that the local fishermen switched jobs to other things, like salt mining, crabbing in the lagoon, or making charcoal from wood. They did these things for varying periods of time, noting that some started back fishing in about two years, but with poor results. Others got back to fishing in 4-5 years when things seemed to be back to usual for the fin fish but not shellfish. He noted that there was some tar about 20-25 feet offshore, but he was not specific about exactly where it was.

Our second interview was with Eliodoro Carmel Couoh, who now works for CONANP, the national commission for protected areas in Mexico. He was a fisherman at the time of Ixtoc, but he said all fishing stopped because there were no fish. He moved to other ports where he could find fishing work, like Sisal and Chicxulub. He moved back in 5 or 6 years and started fishing again. He thinks that the protected area is now very good for Celestun, since it adds different kinds of activities and jobs, and it attracts more people.

We did not search for any old Ixtoc tar at Celestun, but we did find out that the fishermen were impacted by the spill.

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

Today we met in the Hotel Baluarte restaurant for breakfast again to strategize for our field trip to Isla Arenas. Our same team will make this trek, except for Otto, who needed to stay back and attend to academic affairs. We will also have a representative from the Biosphere Reserve going along with us.

The target area for today is the large mangrove swamp that extends over 100 miles to the north of Campeche, Campeche, all the way to Celestun, Yucatan. It is an amazingly large swamp that is fed by springs to give the brackish salinity gradient necessary. There are no surface rivers in the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula, but there are many underground rivers that come to the surface in this area via springs both on the land and on the adjacent continental shelf.

This area is such a special natural area that it has been declared a biosphere reserve, the Reserva de la Biosfera de la Ria de Celestun, in the northern portion.

It is about a two hour drive from Campeche to Isla Arenas, first on the Campeche to Merida highway and then on a road that gets decreasingly smaller as you head from Calkini to Isla Arenas towards the coast. It is only one lane for the last 15 or so miles that go through the swamp.

My reason for wanting to visit this area, one that I have never been to before, because the road was only built less than ten years ago (after the time I lived here in the mid 1980s), are multifold. First, I have always been curious about the area and its vastness and the lack of study there, and I was almost certain that Ixtoc oil had gone in there 30 years ago. Julio Sanchez had confirmed this a few weeks ago when I talked to him and he went to the area and confirmed it with fishermen at Isla Arenas. The fishermen related that the mangrove oysters that were common before the spill had never come back, so that was very interesting and curious also. Lastly, the area is the tropical equivalent to the Mississippi Delta salt marshes that are now being impacted by the big BP spill, so a visit here might give us some information about the future for them.

The last mile or so to Isla Arenas is across a bridge into the little fishing village with no paved streets, only sand. After buying some expensive gasoline for a "charter panga" we climbed on board and headed southward for the extensive shoreline mangroves. The first stop did not reveal anything, and a trip up a side channel into the swamp was uneventful also. However, on our third stop..."bingo", we found tar. It was not heavy, and it was very degraded, so we cannot be certain that it was Ixtoc until analysis is completed, but we did find some. Large red mangroves with their distinctive prop roots line the outer margin of the swamp facing the Gulf of Mexico. Behind the red mangroves, which live in the subtidal fringe (edge of the water), are black mangroves with their distinctive pneumataphores. These are air roots that extend upwards in the intertidal zone where they live, instead of down into the mud where the sediment is anoxic.

The first evidence was what appeared to be dark brown pieces of humus on the sediment ridge just behind the black mangroves. Later we found a thin layer of what appeared to be tar, but it too looked like humus. Then at the edge between the red and black mangrove at low tide we found a layer of tar about 3/4 inch thick that still had a slight sheen when broken open and a slight smell of petroleum.

Without considerable sampling, I cannot say for sure, but it appears to me that this outer band of red and black mangroves were impacted by Ixtoc, or another spill sometime years ago, and that the remnant tar is almost completely degraded or weathered away today. There are some mangroves that appear dense in growth and normal, but there are some areas where the vegetative cover of mangroves is not as dense as it should be. This could be from effects of the tar. The small amount that we found was thin and had mangrove roots growing below and adjacent to it. A rough estimate on this short visit looks to me like about 80% recovery from the impact. Analysis by Gerardo Gold at CINVESTAV will later determine the true origin.

We did not find any mangrove oysters growing in the three areas that we visited, and the fishermen confirmed that they still do not see any. An old fisherman we spoke to said that he knew where some were, but he was not telling anyone. They tasted fine when you ate them, but then after digestion started, he got an oily tasting burp?

After our boat trip, we had some fish tacos in an open air beach restaurant facing the Gulf. I headed back to Merida, Julio went back to Campeche, and the writing team hung around for more stories with the fishermen regarding Ixtoc. Tomorrow, I will check out the Celestun area west of Merida, if the developing tropical system doesn't hinder our field trip.

Monday, 5 July 2010

I flew from Corpus Christi to Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, late yesterday evening via Houston on Continental Airlines. After getting through customs and getting my baggage, I headed over to Avis to pick up my brand new Chrysler minivan...a first for me in Mexico, but one that will come in handy with our rather large crew. I spent the night in the Hacienda Inn near the airport, the same place my family stayed in 1985. The outside and grounds still look great, but the inside is showing its age.

I met part of our team in the lobby at 6:30 AM for our drive to Campeche where we would pick up the rest of the team. Mark Schrope is an independent writer who is going to do a book on the big BP spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico, and he is interested in seeing how the Ixtoc spill affected the environment and people in Mexico 30 years ago to give some perspective for his current work. He is also doing an article for Nature on our current expedition. Elisabeth Malkin is with the New York Times, Mexico City office, and she has David Rochkind, an independent photographer working with her to document our current expedition looking for remnant Ixtoc I oil/tar and impacts on fishermen and coastal communities.

After a two hour drive to Campeche, Campeche, we met up with two other members of our team at the Hotel Baluarte, where we will be staying tonight. Here we picked up my old friend and colleague Julio Sanchez, who has helped us with HRI's GulfBase as our Spanish Editor for many years, and Otto Ortega Morales, who is Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Campeche, where Julio works too. Julio is a fisheries specialist and sailed on one of the first research vessels from Mexico to study the Ixtoc spill in 1979. Otto studies microbial communities in coastal environments and is particularly interested in biofilms and biotechnology.

After strategizing over a late breakfast, we headed southward down the Campeche coastline towards the fishing village of Champoton. To my surprise, it does not look like a village any more, since it has grown considerably over the past 30 years.

Since the area south of town along this stretch of coast is where I saw the most oil/tar of any location on my 1980 exploratory trip along the entire southern Gulf shoreline, we picked a spot soon after leaving the town. It was near the Marine/Navy Station at mile marker 136 where the limestone shoreline extended in either direction for miles. We found several very weathered patches of tar on the rocks in the upper supratidal zone under the sea grape and button wood trees. Otto took samples for microbial analysis, and I collected some for chemical analysis or fingerprinting by Gerardo Gold at CINVESTAV in Merida. We do not know if the tar is Ixtoc tar, so the only way to determine that is by fingerprinting. I do not know if it is possible for Gerardo to analyze a sample like this, but he can tell us on Wednesday when I drop them off. It is so weathered it just looks like dried asphalt.

Since Hurricane Roxanne really hammered this coast in the late 1990s and the road was moved inland a little ways, it was hard to find any of my other stations. We drove all the way to Sabancuy in southern Campeche, but we were unable to find any other suitable access points or appropriate rocky shores.

About mid afternoon we stopped at a small restaurant overlooking the Gulf just south of Champoton, where we met up with Carlos E. Brown, a retired 78 year old free-diving fisherman from the Ixtoc I days. Talking with him was a real pleasure and very much like listening to an oral history of the area. He related that he used to get 60-70 pounds of grouper and snapper spear fishing before the Ixtoc spill. Although heavy oil did not come in to this area, he related that his mask would get covered with a film of oil, and that dead tarpon and grouper washed in along the shoreline. He stopped fishing then, getting fish for his restaurant from western Mexico or rivers to sustained him in the down time. He said it took 3-4 years before the fishery started to recover, and 8-10 years before it recovered completely.

Julio, Otto, and I headed back to Campeche, but Elisabeth, David, and Mark stayed behind to go visit Carlos in his home and hotel to get more stories and images.

Limestone rocky shoreline south of Champoton, Campeche, Mexico, and location of considerable  Ixtoc I oil/tar in 1979-80.

Close up image of possible remnant of Ixtoc tar on limestone rocky shore south of Champoton, Campeche, Mexico (5 July 2010)

Expedtion I Photos

Wes Tunnell showing a piece of Ixtoc I tar mat from Enmedio Reef Lagoon

  Close up of Enmedio Reef lagoon tar mat

Wes Tunnell (blue cap) and Alberto Vazquez (tan cap) with four Anton Lizardo fishermen who were interviewed regarding their experience with the Ixtoc I oil spill.

Expedition II Statement

The purpose of this expedition will be to return to one site (Champoton) where I saw considerable oil/tar in August 1980 on the limestone rocky shoreline and then to go to the fishing village of Isla Arenas north of Campeche, Campeche, to look at the mangrove community and mangrove oysters that purportedly were both impacted by Ixtoc oil. Since there were no studies in that area, we will only gain anecdotal information, but it may help in understanding the wider impact from the Ixtoc spill in this very sensitive area that is the tropical counterpart to the salt marshes of the Mississippi Delta now being impacted by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico. We will interview fishermen and other coastal residents in Champoton, Campeche, Isla Arenas, and Celestun, all on the western side of the Yucatan Peninsula.

My long-time friend and colleague Julio Sanchez from EPOMEX at the University of Campeche will accompany me during the first two days (5-6 July) of this expedition, and I will have two writers along to document the trip. More about them when we hit the field next week.

Expedition I Statement

The purpose of this expedition was to determine the presence or remnants of Ixtoc I oil/tar mats that we first documented by our team in October 1979. Tropical storms in September 1979 pushed oil towards the Veracruz Reef System, but it appeared that the oil went over the reefs on the elevated storm surge and landed on the beaches of the reef islands. Our long-term coral reef ecology study site called Enmedio Reef and Island (from the early 1970s to mid 1990s), looked like a white sandy key with a black donut wrapped round it in October 1979. These "mousse mats", later termed "tar mats", were most widespread on the windward side of the island and averaged 2-12 inches thick and 10-30 feet in width. They were intermittently present on the leeward side also. Large numbers of a bivalve clam (Asaphis deflorata) shells and the tests of three species of sea urchins (Lytechinus variegatus, Tripneustes ventricosus, and Echinometra lucunter) were observed on island beaches.

Over the years when my Coral Reef Ecology class field trip from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi would visit the island for two weeks each June, I would resurvey the mats and found that they continued to degrade or weather through time. Within several years they were covered by a veneer of sand and shells and were difficult to distinguish from the natural reef lagoon coral rock or rubble bottom, unless you knew where to look. Where the mousse settled in the sea grass beds (turtle grass) near the island during September 1979, the sea grass had died by the time of our next visit in June 1980.

On 16 June 2010 I returned to Enmedio to see if I could find the tar mats again. With assistance on logistics from my long-time friend and colleague Dr./Admiral Alberto Vazquez (PhD in Physical Oceanography from Texas A&M and formerly of the Mexican Navy Oceanographic Institute, as well as HRI Advisory Board Member) from Veracruz, and documentation by Joel Bourne, a writer for National Geographic, we located the first tar mat within about five minutes in the leeward lagoon. Capitan Serrano, owner of the dive shop in Anton Lizardo, the fishing village just shoreward of Enmedio, beached his panga just a few feet away from the mat and that made our snorkeling task easy.

So, after 30 years, the tar mats are still there. They appear to only be only 5-10% of the original size, and only 1-3 inches in thickness, but they are still there. When broken open, they still smell strongly of petroleum. Sand, shell, and coral are found on top and within the mats, and some algae was observed growing on top of the mat (Padina sp. and some blue green filamentous algae).

We located one other mat on the southern side of the pier on the leeward side of the island. It was more weathered, as we expected, being on the higher energy side of the island where physical processes speed the weathering process.

The next day Alberto assisted us in interviews on the beach in Anton Lizardo with some older fishermen who were active 30 years ago during the spill. They remembered it visibly as a very disruptive time for their artisanal fishing activities. They related that they had to put plastic bags on their legs to walk along the beach and to their boats in the one-foot deep oil/mousse. Look for more information on these interviews in Joel’s story in the October issue of National Geographic.

Expedition Map