Unmistakable odor of oil fills the Mississippi Gulf Coast air

By Terry R. Cassreino

GULFPORT (Sunday, May 23, 2010) – A steady, late afternoon breeze from the south cooled the beach across from the Courtyard Inn near downtown – and with it came the unmistakable, strong odor of oil.

This was not the odor of gasoline or a lawn mower.

This was no doubt oil, part of the thousands of barrels of crude that have continued to spew for more than a month from a leak at an underwater well some 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana Coast.

But save for the strong stench of oil, you wouldn’t have known the biggest ecological disaster was taking place miles south of here. It was business as usual along the Mississippi Coast on Saturday as visitors and residents relaxed on the beach unfazed by the oil spill.



My family was among the many beachgoers. I brought my wife and two children to Gulfport late Saturday to relax on the beach and wade in the warm, clear waters of the Mississippi Sound. It was our second trip to Harrison County beaches in two weeks.

Saturday’s trip to Gulfport and a bit better than the one we made two weeks earlier to a stretch of the beach in Long Beach – where the water was a murky brown and we found two large fish dead on the beach.

We saw no dead fish Saturday. And the beach itself – perhaps because it was directly across the street from the Courtyard Inn (which was once the Holiday Inn in Gulfport) – was nicer and staffed by vendors renting umbrellas and jet skis.

As our children enjoyed the afternoon playing in the sand and wading in the water, I kept thinking about the scope of this ongoing disaster and the potential for long-lasting effects on tourism, seafood and the health of a region still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

And then I stumbled across this video on You Tube, “Requiem for the Gulf,” which I am posting below. After you watch it, you’ll find it hard to dismiss the seriousness of the oil spill caused April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, leased by BP, exploded and then sank in the Gulf.