"I'm really mad. I'm finding dead turtles, birds, giant fish and other animals all over the beach. No one comes by to clean them up right away and people come down here and let their kids play next to them. And the water looks like chicken broth."
"It's so sad," says Mississippi coastal resident Laurel Lockamy who found a dead sea turtle over the weekend wrapped in orange tape, ready for retrieval.
Turtles are just the latest sea life deaths to get federal attention. So far this year, at least 134 dolphins have been found stranded along the Gulf coast, about four times the average number. Nearly half of the dolphins were newborns or juveniles. Earlier this year NOAA issued an Unusual Mortality Event for dolphins, which triggers a federal investigation into the deaths.
Recently, dolphin tissue samples from independent marine labs were confiscated and sent to federal labs for analysis due to a federal investigation into their cause of death. NMFS is continuing to do testing on the turtles and dolphins but test results aren't expected soon. Scientists say it may be impossible to know if dolphin and turtle strandings are due to the BP oil blowout. And some say the increased numbers of dead dolphins and turtles could be due to increased surveillance of the area after the oil washed in.
That's not very reassuring to residents who have already lost trust in government officials and the BP claims process. Science may take a long time to solve these mysterious deaths, but people like Shirley feel they already know the answer. She and others blame ongoing health problems from exposures to oil and dispersants, something the medical establishment has yet to confirm. That's not surprising, Shirley says. "If they don't have a decent system to track and find out what's happening to dolphins and turtles, then why should they have one for people?"
Whether or not the oil had anything to do with the dead turtles washing up on the beaches, people here simply want answers. They want their lives--and their ocean--back. They want it back the way it used to be.
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