Whitney Medved's paddleboard vacation was less slippery than expected.
Since the April 20th explosion of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil well, it’s been pretty much impossible to hear “oil” and “Gulf Coast” in the same sentence without also hearing “total decimation.” Flipping on the TV or surfing the web and seeing pictures of the gusher spitting out thousands of gallons of oil by the minute didn’t do much to encourage beach travel; obviously summer tourism was stunted a little. All anyone could do was imagine baby birds coated in oil and Fern Gully-like pollution desecrating the environment. Heading to the beach after exposure like that would be sort of like packing up for a forest getaway in the wake of a conflagration.
The Gulf Coast is a massive area however and, as with all generalizations, blanket statements are often incorrectly applied. For example, the beaches of South Walton—a string of small beach communities in Northwest Florida lining the scenic highway 30A—did not get waylaid by the spill. The literally “squeaky-clean” white sand beaches (the sand squeaks when you walk on it, and trash is nowhere to be seen) were not marred by giant tar balls or oil slicks as even some locals anticipated.
In an attempt to salvage whatever reputation they could BP assumed full responsibility for clean-up. A massive crew was assembled and made ready to clean. A few tar balls surfaced here and there, but that was it. For whatever reason, the oil slicks just didn’t make their way to South Walton. Some locals are still wondering where exactly all that oil is—Perhaps settling to the ocean bottom? Further dispersing throughout the Gulf?—and are not quite ready to let go of their breath.
For whatever it’s worth, I was just there. I walked along the beaches, swam in the ocean, and explored the coastal dunes and costal dune lakes. Not once did I encounter any visual evidence of the oil spill, and I was told there never really was any to begin with. The locals also continue to swim, stand up paddle board, and surf when the waves are big enough.
By no means am I suggesting the problem has evaporated as the oil seems to have done in some places; but if you were curbing your travel plans because of it, you might not have to.
