employees of the ibrc who have responded to oil spills like this and could do the job. when i asked why do you have to have a state person and federal person in each boat? well, we have separate chains of command, they were trying to sell it as a good thing. two experts in a boat, but it just seemed bureaucratic and didn t seem to make it wasn t helping, and in what i m being told, it s basically this bureaucracy that s getting in the way of getting experts out in boats, moving fast, and getting as many birds as possible. exactly, there s no reason why there shouldn t be 50 people down in grand isle every morning at 5:00 in the morning, trying to capture these birds. we re talking about a huge area. these islands and estuaries, there s a lot of coastline there to cover. the most i ve seen is 20 people. often they re down there at 8:30 in the morning, in the heat of the day. they re not down there at dawn. you re saying they re
reports, i don t think they understand or appreciate the way bp has handled this and mishandled this just in public relations. and they don t. i was on a radio talk show in england and got some pretty nasty calls in. i invited to fly those people over here and see. come dip your hand in the oil and see what s happening to our way life. and i think you ll change your tune. i want to know on a personal level, how are you holding up? you re working around the clock. i ve been out there with you on the water. how are you and the folks you re working with? we don t have a choice. we don t have enough equipment, we don t have enough organization out there by bp, so we re having to do everything we can. i mean, the guys on jackup boat today took their two wet vacs and went out there. i can t believe you guys are using wet vacs on day 56. that s one of our guys on the boat. the governor calls that cajun
dead. that doesn t take into account the other species that are at risk. the images make you sick to your stomach, particularly the brown pell can, which just last year managed to make its way off the endangered species list after four decades. what are your biggest concerns? i think a lot of people don t realize in every boat that goes out right now, there has to be a federal wildlife official, a state wildlife official and bp contractor, for a while there were bird experts going out, they pulled back and are no longer going out. there s a lot of concern about the level of expertise of people getting these birds? that s correct, anderson. from the beginning, the ibrc had people on the ground from day one. and after they experienced that huge wave of oil on the third and fourth of june. that s when we started seeing all these pictures? exactly.
really, not one phone call at all? no. how does this log jam break? i have no idea, anderson, that s such a conundrum right now. you don t need four or five people in a boat, two or three would be enough? absolutely. they do employ techniques where they get somebody on the ground, that kind of can scoot a bird toward somebody else or scare it out into the water, and then it can be picked up safely. sometimes three people is a good number. four people, that s kind of ridiculous. i was alarmed when i heard it s not bird experts in these boats any longer. people working hard, it s the u.s. fish and wildlife. one guy i talked to was an otter expert, another was a fire fighter. they want to do good, but you need some expertise. if we had a hostage situation, we d bring in our best military personnel, best
like the wet vacs you buy in a store? yeah, they work great. we re not supposed to be picking up the oil, but it went into some areas, and our team on the jackup boat decided it was better to get it out of those critical areas, they went out there and in a matter minutes filled up four or five five-gallon cans, we re going to look at all opportunities. we can t let it continue to come in the marsh. as i said saturday in the meeting with bp, we have to catch up and keep it from coming into the marsh. we need to be reactive instead nobody asked for us to deploy help from all over the world. right, because of the jones act you re not allowed to have foreign ships. there s foreign ships out there right now, if that s what it takes and that s where we need to skimmer boats from holland or some place they should have all been deployed, the ones they deployed was in a public meeting in plaquemines parish where they