The Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory, a not-for-profit organization founded to support marine research and education, has taken the biblical narrative of Noah and his ark (substituting the floods of water with the hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon rig) and applied it to its initiative to repopulate the Gulf’s waters with marine life and reinvigorate of local fisheries.
They’re calling the plan “Operation Noah’s Ark,” in hopes of retrofitting their facilities to face the pending damage of the Apalachee Bay in Panacea, where the lab is located. As of now, Gulf Specimen is an open seawater system, according to Gulf Specimen founder Jack Rudloe, which means “it sucks seawater from the bay and then basically discharges some of it.” Part of the goal of Operation Noah’s Ark is trying to turn the facilities into a completely closed system to keep the oil out.
Unlike the story from Genesis, building the boat—or, in this case, retrofitting the facilities to only save the current marine inhabitants of Gulf Specimen—is not enough.
“If everything is dead and gone around us, and the estuaries are covered with oil and there was no Achilles fish or Fiddler crabs and so on, this would turn Gulf Specimen into Noah’s Ark,” Rudloe said.
In addition to protecting the lab’s specimens with closed system technologies before the oil seeps in, Operation Noah’s Ark is combating the spill damage by growing shrimp stocks in hatcheries. After the Gulf is no longer polluted with oil, the shrimp will be released into the sea.
“There won’t be any of those predators around [after the oil], there won’t be much of anything,” Rudloe said. “And as soon as the water can accommodate life like shrimp and some of these other things and the toxicity abates, then a stock-and-put program like the Operation Noah’s Ark could be very successful and could ultimately speed up the rebuilding of the fisheries in the Gulf.”
Another part of the Operation is to immerse tree branches into the Gulf, offering a habitat for oysters and other sea life that will help filter and cleanse the water as well as repopulate what may be lost due to the oil.
Also, the creation of “living docks,” fiberglass habitats which create artificial reefs, is another element of the plan. These reefs will not only help with repopulation, but also become home to marine life who act as natural bacteria filters.
By building up the invertebrate population and trying to get oyster reefs back into place, Operation Noah’s Ark is helping a wide range of marine life, up to the coppery oil-covered birds featured in most photos of animals affected by the spill.
“It’s really heartbreaking to see a pelican or a sea turtle or a dolphin engulfed in oil,” said Rudloe. “We’re closer to those animals, because they’re big and they’re similar. Something like a jellyfish or a snail or a little grass shrimp or something of that sort is a little bit removed, but you have to bear in mind that everything big that you see there is connected directly back down to that food chain.”
Gulf Specimen has been having trouble funding the operation, however, because of little assistance from the state and from BP, according to Rudloe.
“We’ve received word that they are going to consider processing our claims, but this has been going on before May 7,” Rudloe said.
The problem with this, he elaborated, is that the oil hasn’t actually reached the shores of the Apalachee Bay yet.
“The BP approach is ‘Well, you don’t have any damage now, and you can file a claim after the damage,’” said Rudloe. “Well, let’s say the stuff gets sucked into our tanks. The sharks we’ve been raising here for years and the sea turtles and everything else dies.”
Gulf Specimen was founded in 1963, and Rudloe said he’s “not about to give up and wait for this place to die.”
As of now, Operation Noah’s Ark is accepting donations from the public, and is taking volunteers to help with a variety of processes.
Rudloe said that the response from the community and Wakulla County government was “heartening,” and “it’s a great chance for people to get together,” no matter what their occupation or location along or near the gulf.
“Our condition and our time right now is really urgent to get set up and to be able to do things,” said Rudloe. “We need ditch diggers, we need manual labor, we need carpenters, we need all kinds of people in here to help and we need to do it right now, not before we really get hit with something.”
To contribute through donation or volunteer effort, or to learn more, visit www.gulfspecimen.org