The winning photo in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.
On first glance it looks bizarrely beautiful with the shades of brown, the symmetry and posture of the pelicans, the feel that it’s staged and the fact they’re looking out at you……but actually it’s a sad snapshot of the environmental impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Spaniard Daniel Beltra was in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, photographing the extent of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He was mainly shooting aerial photos of the attempts to clean up the spill, but this photo was taken at a rescue centre in Fort Jackson, Louisiana.
Birds die by the thousands in large spills, as they instinctively try to clean themselves and then die from having ingested the oil. It adversely affects their digestive systems and they can subsequently starve. To compound their problems, the feathers lose their natural water-repellent and insulative qualities, and the birds can die from cold. All in all, it’s a hideous way to go.
When these birds were photographed, they had just gone through the first stage of cleaning. This involved spraying them with a light oil to break up the heavy crude oil trapped in their feathers. The resulting smelly, mucky residue dripped from the birds’ plumage on to a white sheet.
While the photo might look elegantly staged, it was in fact grabbed in the briefest of opportunities so as not to cause any further stress to the birds. Daniel told the BBC:
“There was a closed door on the box. Every so often it would be opened and a bird would be taken out to be cleaned properly. I had a 35mm lens and when that door was opened, I would look in and grab three or four shots. The intent was not to disturb them any more than was necessary.”
Daniel mentioned that more than 6000 dead birds were recovered, but I don’t know whether that’s just by the one centre in Fort Jackson or across the whole of the Gulf of Mexico. Whatever, it’s a lot.
And it’s not just that one oil spill that causes problems for the Gulf of Mexico. Take a look at this map of reported spills in just one year!
(via nocarbon)
