By Hal Herring

We may be home from the Louisiana coast for now, but our worries have not been left behind. The story of the oil spill is still unfolding. These are some of the resources that we are tracking every day.

Best satellite imagery of oil spill from NASA, updated daily
Best resource for oil spill coverage, including Bob Marshall’s reporting for the Time-Picayune.

By Bob Marshall

"What about the rest of us" is a question that keeps ringing in my mind as I watch governments and BP move to compensate people suffering economic hardship due to the oil company's disastrous mistake in the Gulf of Mexico. A dominant theme in the reporting and commentary (including mine) has concerned the terrible economic impact on the commercial fishing community, charter boat operators, and beach tourism, and how the responsible parties should--and are--paying the bill.

That's all proper. But what about the rest of us?

What about you and me, the sportsmen, and the rest of the citizen-owners of these resources? We don't depend on these public properties to make our livings, but we do depend on them to make our lives better. And our claims are as just and valid as any others--and money might not heal the wounds.

By Bob Marshall

A small piece of the vast mat of oil in the Gulf, photographed by Tim Romano just 12 miles from the port of Venice, Louisiana.

Remember those movies about murder trails where the innocent guy is waiting for the jury to come back and tell him if he's going to live or die?

Remember how the hero can only sit there and sweat, hoping and praying fate delivers him and his family an unjust and untimely demise?

Remember how he constantly glances at the clock only to discover time is in slow motion, seconds stretching out like hours, hours like days, all the while glancing at that closed door wondering, fearing what might be going on beyond his control?

Now you know how sportsmen feel along the Louisiana coast and all across the northern Gulf of Mexico. It's been more than two weeks since BP's Deepwater Horizon well blew and began pumping 210,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf each day, more than 3.2 million gallons in all, with no real end in sight. Predictions of imminent doom last weekend passed thanks to a stiff storm, but the spill this week continued to grow, continued to shutter recreational and commercial fisheries, continued to pose the ultimate threat of poisoning the most productive estuary in the lower 48 states.

By Hal Herring

Editor’s Note: Field & Stream Contributing Editor Hal Herring and photographer/FlyTalk blogger Tim Romano are at the Louisiana coast this week to cover the impact of the oil spill on the region’s sportsmen. Their reports, photographs, and videos will be posted here at The Conservationist blog.

12 miles off South Pass, Venice, Louisiana--I’m not trying to be dramatic, but the oil spill, once you find it, looks more like a wide and shimmering mat of raw sewage than petrochemicals released from thousands of feet beneath the bottom of the ocean. It is orange- one could surmise that it contains iron that is oxidizing like rusty blobs of pot metal, exposed to the air on the surface of what used to be blue water. Held in the hand, it has the consistency of warm axle grease, and is at least as hard to remove, given that we are far from the nearest tub of Go-Jo. In the orange mat, which stretches out of sight in the snake-like contours of the ocean current that pushes and pulls it, trash is mired, along with hundreds of rainbow–hued Portuguese men-of-war, the big jellyfish of the Gulf (see photo). At one point, a big loggerhead turtle can be seen, in the mat, eating an oil-covered man-of war. It has always amazed me that these turtles’ favorite snack is a hyper-weird creature with long tentacles covered with stinging cells, but the ocean is another world, not bound by the rules, or desires, or disgusts, of mankind.