Science Features

Rescuers wrestle pelicans to health ahead of hurricanes

By Frank Brandmaier Jun 8, 2010, 11:33 GMT

A handout picture released by Greenpeace shows an oil covered pelican trying to fly after being coated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead in Barataria Bay, Louisiana just off the Gulf of Mexico, USA, 06 June 2010. EPA/JOSE LUIS MAGANA

Buras, Louisiana - 'Number 75' is feeling really bad.

Up and down, up and down, the female pelican paces off her close quarters with a waddle, ruffling her feathers in annoyance under the warming rays of the red lamp.

It's hard for such a master fisher to realize that the wood-plank jail is the best thing that could have happened to her: her feathers are deep brown and black, sticking like glue to one another, wrenching testimony to the biggest marine oil spill in US history.

Number 75 is the newest arrival at the rescue station run by the International Bird Rescue Research Centre (IBRRC) on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Oil from the ruptured BP well in the Gulf of Mexico has penetrated deep into the marshes and coated pelicans, laughing gulls and other sea birds as they dive for fish.

Inside the rented warehouse, volunteers wash sticky toxins out of plumage, trying to give birds a second chance. As the unfolding ecological disaster neared the end of its seventh week, winds and currents continued to whip the gushing oil along the broad stretch of coastline from Louisiana to Florida, sending more and more birds to the centre.

With hurricane season just begun, animal rescuers fear things could get even worse, perhaps more than they could handle, when the first storm arrives. The earliest the oil gusher can be shut down permanently is August, at the apex of the Atlantic storm season.

Baffled by the initial slow arrival of oiled birds, Jay Holcomb, director of the IBRRC, noted: 'There's not much going on right now. They are getting in slowly, but, unfortunately, surely.'

At the time, last week, the bird centre had more than two dozen animals in its charge.

The most common oil slick victim and unwilling guest in Buras is the brown pelican - Louisiana's state bird and agile diver, which only recently came back from the edge of extinction. The Buras center is one of four rescue centers set up by IBRRC in the Gulf region. Under US law, BP must pay for wildlife rescue and recovery after any spill.

The centres are bracing for the worst.

'All it takes is one storm that moves oil to land. Then the pelican really is in trouble,' says Holcomb, who has been involved in such operations for 25 years.

The number of oiled birds could climb into the hundreds or even thousands, he fears. Each rescue centre on the Gulf is equipped to handle up to 500 animals. Experts at the US weather agency NOAA have projected an 'active' hurricane season with up to 14 large storms in the western Atlantic.

On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon drill rig explosion killed 11 workers and ripped open the freshly drilled oil well. Since then, oil has gushed into the Gulf, and wildlife has been turning up dead at a much higher rate than usual: at least 500 birds, 220 sea turtles and 30 dolphins.

Federal wildlife officials have not blamed all the deaths on the oil spill, only making such assertions after autopsies. But wildlife experts agree that the toll on wildlife will be great.

Just in November 2009, the US government removed the brown pelican from its list of endangered species. An estimated 40,000 brown pelicans live in the northern reaches of the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil disaster struck in the middle of breeding season, and hatchlings are now sitting in marshland nests waiting to be fed, Holcomb said.

'We know that the potential could be really great and catastrophic if it impacts the nesting islands where all the pelicans have babies right now,' Holcomb said.

In 1995, in the same region, he watched how a tropical storm - not even at hurricane strength - whipped up a small oil slick offshore from Louisiana and carried the sticky mess onto the nesting islands. The parents disappeared, and the young were left to fend for themselves.

'We had to clean 600 babies. It happened already, it can happen again,' he worries.

What awaits contaminated birds once they arrive at an IBRRC centre is usually the same.

The added stress of immediate washing could prove fatal. Instead, the birds are stabilized for at least 48 hours while they recover from the stress of being oiled, captured and transported. This requires feeding and possible medical treatment. Many are chilled to the bone and must be warmed up.

'It's frightening for them,' Holcombe says.

The birds' natural instincts are to fight the rescuers, and it can take up to three volunteers to wash one pelican, which can weigh up to 6 kg and have a wing span of 2.5 metres. Shampooing requires up to 15 tubs of sudsy water, one after another, washing with the same liquid soap used by families to wash dishes in the kitchen sink.

Cotton swabs and toothbrushes are used to clean around the eyes and head. A thorough rinse is followed by drying in a cage in which warm air blows up from beneath.

Number 75 still had all of that ahead of her. In a few days, it would be her turn to be freed from the deadly coat of oil, Holcomb said. After the cleaning, she would join other pelicans waiting outside in a cage for the next step: restored freedom and, eventually, a new chance at life without oil.