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August 20 Alabama
Waters Now Open for Crab Harvest August 16 All
Alabama Waters Now Open for Fishing Dauphin Island Video Update - 8-11-10 August 8 Alabama's portion of Mississippi Sound reopened to fishing and shrimping today - The Alabama Marine Resources Division announces that Alabama state waters west of the Dauphin Island Bridge and north of Dauphin Island that were closed as a precautionary measure due to the Deepwater Horizon disaster will reopen for recreational and commercial fishing effective at 6 a.m. August 8, 2010. All areas in Mississippi Sound not permanently closed will also reopen for shrimping at this time. full news release Testing of samples from Gulf waters will be completed within the next couple of days and waters will likely be reopened to fishing and shrimping sometime next week. August 5 As cement flows into broken oil well, boom comes out of the water - BP finished pumping fresh cement into its blown-out oil well Thursday, virtually assuring there is no longer a chance of oil leaking into the environment, according to company and federal officials. full story Broken
well now sealed with cement
- BP finished pumping fresh cement into its blown-out oil well
Thursday as aimed to seal for good the ruptured pipe that for
months spewed crude into Gulf of Mexico... Dauphin Island Video Update - 7-31-10 July 31 Dauphin Island's beaches remain clean and our waters are clear. Most BP cleanup workers have been placed on a standby status. Dauphin Island has been very fortunate to have avoided most of the effects of the oil spill. All swimming restrictions have been lifted and improvements in beach conditions for Mobile and Baldwin counties have prompted the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) to lift all swimming advisories. The department has replaced red swimming advisory signs with yellow signs that outline precautions for beachgoers. Information
on Oil Spill Issued by ADPH - 7-30-10 Waters in Mobile Bay are now open to all fishing, shrimping and crabbing, and the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources is in the process of testing fish samples from the Gulf waters for any possible oil contamination. Only catch and release fishing is currently allowed, but it is anticipated that all of Alabama's Gulf waters will be reopened to all fishing activities sometime during the next couple of weeks! It appears that we may finally be getting back to normal and, due to earlier cancellations, we do have many openings for the remainder of our summer season. Y'all come on down! Online reservations: View all of our rental homes and condos and make your reservations today. July 25
Our
beaches are very clean and the Gulf waters are a little stirred
up today but not bad considering the fairly good-sized waves
from the remnants of TD Bonnie. All in all it's a very pleasant
day at the beach! Dauphin Island Video Update - July 24 July 24 TD Bonnie headed inland with little more than a wimper Saturday night. What was Tropical Storm Bonnie passed south of Dauphin Island and hit the Louisiana coast as nothing more than a disorganized low pressure system. Crews have already been sent back to the site of the oil spill. We here on the Island were actually hoping for a bit of much-needed rain from Bonnie but we didn't get a single drop! July 23 Tropical Storm Bonnie weakens after it makes landfall south of Miami...heading toward site of oil rig disaster. Crews evacuated from the site of the oil spill. July 22 Tropical depression moving toward Gulf oil spill - A tropical depression has formed over the Bahamas and is moving toward the site of massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. full article
July
21 July 14 Pieces of Deepwater Horizon rig wash up on Dauphin Island full article June 28 Additional oil barrier is planned. Joy B. Earp If no
major objections are received, we plan to authorize this request
by Emergency Permit. Should we receive no agency comment, this
will be considered as agency concurrence/waiver or no objection
to the proposed June 26 Conservation
Department Opens State Waters for Catch and Release Fishing “Many
fish for the pure pleasure of catching and then releasing already.
We see no reason why that activity can’t continue,”
said Conservation Commissioner Barnett Lawley. June 25 Mobile
Bay ferry between Dauphin Island and Fort Morgan may be erratic
due to oil in water Mobile
Operations Summary: Day-End Brief June 25 June 24 Swimming
advisories again issued for Dauphin Island and Mississippi Sound
June 19 Dauphin Island waters now OK to Swim! State lifts swim advisory as conditions improve. Brown shrimp season could open in the next two weeks.
June 12
The weather today is hot and our waters around the Island are still beautiful. There has been no significant change in the amount oil coming ashore on the Island but unfortunately, a good bit has washed up on beaches at Gulf Shores and Orange Beach - Article and video It could be only a matter of time before we see something like this here on Dauphin Island, but we still hope that by some miracle we are able to escape the worst. The Island is prepared and the beaches are being kept very clean.
BP crews patrol the beach every day, all day long, and any oil/tarballs is cleaned up pretty quicky. So far, there has not been enough oil on the Island to present a danger to birds or marine life...no oiled birds like we are seeing in Louisiana. The BP crews seem to be doing a pretty good job, but the removal of tar balls is very labor intensive. BP authorized Gulf Shores to purchase 10 mechanical beach cleaning machines. It would be nice if we could get a couple of these on Dauphin Island as it would speed up the daily beach cleanup
For guests interested in visiting Dauphin Island, our beaches are still open and the Gulf waters are clean. The BP cleanup effort on the Island is something definitely history in the making and well worth witnessing. We do have lots of our nicest properties available due to the many cancellations that we have received. If you book a reservation with us and decide to cancel, we will issue an immediate refund ...even for last-minute cancellations.
Katrina
Cut to be Filled - Gov. Bob Riley announced that a
mile-wide breach on the west end of Dauphin Island known as
the Katrina Cut will be filled in to protect Mobile Bay and
the Mississippi Sound from oil. All Alabama waters in Mississippi Sound have been closed to all fishing. Article Additional Alabama waters under a swimming advisory. In addition to all Gulf waters in Mobile and Baldwin counties, additional inshore waters in both counties are under new advisory. Article Huge Globs of oil reported south of Orange Beach. Article June 4 We just got back from a walk on the West End. What tarballs we observed were of the rice-grain size variety...with a very few dime-sized ones...one of these larger ones in about every 50 feet along the beach. The smell of oil was noticeable. This may be due to offshore burning of the oil. The beach areas to the east of us now seem to be getting impacted. Large mats of tar came ashore in the Gulf Shores area this morning. While we've seen nothing of this quantity on Dauphin Island...so far, at least, we hope that Gulf Shores can get this cleaned up as quickly as possible, but as of 2PM this afternoon Gulf Shores officials were still waiting for clean-up crews to arrive. There are also reports of oil coming ashore at Pensacola Beach, with the Destin area now in the projected impact zone possibly tomorrow. All of us on the coast just wish that this would somehow magically go away, but it's beginning to look like this something that the entire Gulf Coast will have to deal with, at least until the well can be capped. BP did make at least some progress today with the "top hat" containment device, with some oil being siphoned to a surface ship. I will post a further update tonight or in the morning. June 3 Yesterday the tarballs were far less numerous on the island...the average size being smaller than a dime. The oil is said to be approaching the Gulf Shores, AL and Pensacola Beach, FL areas. Swimming advisory is still in place on the island. Fishing is still off limits in all of Alabama's gulf waters. Weather patterns have most of the oil trending toward the east so maybe these advisories and closures can be lifted soon. BP's continues efforts to contain the spill...their latest grand plan is to cover the failed blowout protector (BOP) with a containment system called a lower marine riser package (LMRP) which, if successful, will siphon the oil from the top of the BOP to awaiting surface ships. BP hopes this will capture much of the oil. We shall see. Commercial fishermen rallied to block off the Bayou La Batre Channel in an effort to protest BP's contract hiring process. Dauphin Island Swimmers Ignore Swim Advisory View Live Video feeds of containment operations June 1 Tarballs - Oil reaches Dauphin Island - from Mobile Press Register Oil has
been identified on a portion of Dauphin Island beaches and in
waters immediately offshore. The tar balls were more prevalent
along the Island's public beach adjacent to the fishing pier.
The west end beach had only scattered tar balls, from rice grain
to the size of a quarterThe Alabama Department of Marine Resources
reports that state waters are now closed to fishing on the Gulf
side of Dauphin Island from Ft. Gaines to the AL/MS line. This
emergency closure prohibits all commercial and recreational
fishing along and off of the beaches of Dauphin and Sand Island. Reports
of tar balls have also been confirmed on beaches off Fort
Morgan Road in Gulf Shores. All federal waters of Alabama and Mississippi are also closed to all fishing.
May 24 The Island's beaches remain oil free and it was a beautiful day at the beach (see 5-20-10 photo gallery - link at left)!
The water today was just about as pretty as it gets.
Work continues on the protective sand barrier on the west end. A double barrier is being built along Bienville Blvd. All Gulf side driveways will remain open, and will only be closed off if oil should reach the gulf shoreline. May 23
These are sand cages that have been installed to protect the north (soundside) shoreline. We still have our fingers crossed that we can avoid most of this mess. So far so good. BP is making progress in containing the leak. 210,000 gallons a day are now being siphoned to ships on the surface. On Sunday (5-23) BP will attempt the "top kill" procedure, which is basically a process where robots will inject very heavy drilling mud into the fautly blowout preventer. Then, a concrete cap is poured on top of this. If this procedure is successful, all, or nearly all of the oil flow will be cut off. May 16 BP engineers on Sunday finally succeeded in keeping much of the oil gushing from a blown well out of the Gulf of Mexico, hooking up a mile-long tube to funnel the crude into a tanker ship after more than three weeks of failures. Engineers remotely guiding robot submersibles had worked since Friday to place the tube into a 21-inch pipe nearly a mile below the sea. After several setbacks, the contraption was hooked up successfully and is funneling oil to a tanker ship on the surface. This is very good news! BP plans to inject heavy drilling mud into the wellhead sometime in the coming week. The really good news will be when this well is permanently killed. BP had previously said the tube, if successful, was expected to collect most of the oil gushing from the well. The company said it was too early to measure how much crude was being collected. A researcher told The Associated Press on Sunday that computer models show the oil may have already seeped into a powerful water stream known as the Gulft Loop Current, which could propel it into the Atlantic Ocean...not so good for south Florida and the east coast.
May 15 Small tar balls washed ashore in a few locations along Dauphin Island's gulf beach on Saturday and Sunday of last week. These were quickly picked up by BP cleanup crews. It is believed that this material was from when the rig itself was afire on April 20th and 21st.
Boots on the ground.
Few if any additional tar balls have come ashore over the last several days. As of today (5-15), according to NOAA oil spill mapping, the nearest part of the actual oil slick was still located relatively far from Dauphin Island...at least 50 miles offshore. We are hopeful that BP's latest attempt to quell the flow, by inserting a smaller pipe inside the main pipe and siphoning the oil to awaiting surface tankers, will produce positive results. BP officials are very hopeful that this method will work, and if so, should stop most, if not all of the oil flow. Still, this is only a stop-gap measure. To permanently stop the oil flow BP is drilling two separate wells that will intersect the original well below the seafloor and inject concrete, effectively killing the well. The time frame for completion of these relief wells is about two more months. We all have our fingers crossed that we will be able to avoid a major landfall of oil on our beaches. With the army of BP workers all along the Gulf Coast, any beached oil should be promptly removed.
The Alabama National Guard has completed a protective barrier on the Island's soundside, consisting of interlocking cage structures filled with an oil absorbent material. Press conference on Dauphin Island yesterday (5-14) DAUPHIN
ISLAND, Ala. -- U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Friday
that oil gushing from the broken well in the Gulf probably won't
wash ashore in giant waves.
May 8 Officials
for BP on Saturday encountered a significant setback in their
efforts to attach a containment dome over a leaking well on
the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico, forcing them to move the dome
aside while they evaluate find another method to cap the crude
oil flowing into the Gulf since April 20. Other efforts
continued on Saturday, as BP said that the drilling a relief
well, which would be able to collect the oil at one source of
the leak, had reached 9,000 feet. May 6 To our valued guests, We are sure you have heard the news of the BP/Transocean oil well disaster which occured in waters 95 miles south of Dauphin Island on April 20, 2010. The accident involved the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform approximately 50 miles southeast of Venice, La. An explosion and subsequent fire damaged the rig, which capsized and sank on April 22, 2010, after burning for hours. Eleven people lost their lives in the accident. The rig is owned by Transocean and is under contract to British Petroleum (BP), who owns the well. We pledge to keep our guests accurately informed about this accident, and we ask that our guests study the situation carefully. Check this page regularly for updates. Call or email us if you need more information about the oil spill situation. As of today, no oil has come ashore on any shoreline in Alabama, nor has any oil or oil sheen been reported within Alabama's inshore or offshore waters. The oil slick, as of 5/6/10, is located about 60 miles south ofthe Island at its closest point to our shoreline. Offshore ocean current trends seem to be keeping the slick offshore of us. For the last several days, the weather has been cooperative for the offshore clean-up effort, and control burns and chemical disperssants are being applied at the site of the destroyed oil rig. A large containment dome structure, designed to be placed over the damaged wellhead is now at the scene of the accident. This device acts as a large vacuum cleaner. Oil will be collected within the containment structure and will be pumped to a large ship on the surface for containment and processing. This system will hopefully be in place and operating by Monday, May 10th...hopefully sooner. So...right now we're preparing for the worst and hoping for the best! Again, not a sign of any oil so far, and we certainly hope that the fragile environment of Dauphin Island can avoid being impacted. We cautiously have our fingers crossed! Many of the national media reports over the last several days have implied that not only Dauphin Island, but Gulf Shores/Orange Beach and the Florida Panhandle...even locations as far removed as Key West, are basically going to be devastated by this oil spill. It is certainly true that the spill is an event of national significance, but we feel that it is entirely too soon to automatically assume the worst.
Thanks! USEFUL
WEBSITES AND INFORMATION
Deepwater
Horizon website Informative
website from Univ. of South Florida with Animated spill trajectory
prediction maps using locational floaters - GPS info from floaters
transmitted to satellite University of South Florida. NOAA Town
of Dauphin Island official website
with lots of information. Call 1-800-440-0858 – to report oil related damage. Call
1-866-557-1401 – to report oiled wildlife. |
Dauphin Island
Real Estate, Inc.
P. O. Box 65 - Dauphin Island, AL - 36528