A California State Parks employee scans the polluted shoreline looking for oil covered birds on San Francisco Bay

State and Federal Park Police, toxic clean up contractors, and trained volunteers are overwhelmed by the mass of dead and wounded wildlife and the destruction to beaches caused by the SF Bay Area oil spill.

On Friday afternoon, as globs of tar-like oil littered beaches all around the San Francisco Bay and north of San Francisco, local residents were appalled to see no sign of cleaning or recovery operations at many beaches. Although the federal response at the worst hit beaches in the the most pristine areas of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area were underway, many beaches on the east side of the bay in Oakland, Berkeley, and Albany were virtually untouched by the shovels and backhoes of clean up contractors or the long-handled nets of wildlife rescue workers. Even at Ocean Beach, San Francisco's biggest urban beach and a treasured federal park area, clean up crews were no where to be found. Frustrated locals took to cleaning up what they could, collecting clumps of oil and tar in plastic trash bags, and doing their best to begin to clean up a mess which will scar this area for years.

This news crew reports from a beach covered in oil, as more oil washes ashore, and oil spill containment workers spread an oil collecting boom out in the water behind them. No clean up crews were present on the beach, as tar balls like the one below continued to wash up with increasing frequency.

As residents witnessed the environmental catastrophe unfold before their eyes without adequate response from local and federal authorities, many began to take measures into their own hands. They arrived at many beaches with shovels, plastic gloves, nets, and old overalls at the ready, and began picking up the toxic tarballs and capturing oil covered wildlife for delivery to animal rehabilitation workers. Although many residents worked for hours, most were turned away before they could even begin, met on the beaches by Federal Park Police and various local authorities who informed them that the beaches were closed, and that all cleanup operations had to be performed by trained and certified individuals.

A Federal Park Policeman informs a Bay Area resident that San Francisco's Baker Beach is closed to the public. Whenever individuals approached the beach in an effort to clean up pollution from the spill, or just out of curiosity, Federal Police hurriedly informed them that they had to leave immediately. At many of the closed beaches official clean up efforts were minimal or non-existant, leaving would be volunteers frustrated and often angry. This sign (left) adorned a locked gate at San Francisco's China Beach. The Golden Gate bridge can be seen through the gate in the background. Residents were not allowed to visit the beach for clean up activities, or even just to document the environmental tragedy with their personal cameras.

Even during the weekend, as local and federal officials redoubled their clean up and rescue efforts, the response was obviously much less then was needed to address the serious environmental damage underway. Local media, via newspapers and newscasts, informed residents of clean up volunteer training sessions that had been hastily scheduled for the weekend. Most of the hundreds of would be volunteers who showed up to attend the training sessions were sorely disappointed when they were informed by local authorities at the sessions that any volunteers would have to undergo at least 40 hours of training lasting several weeks before being allowed in the field to rescue animals or pick up oil globs and tarballs from the increasingly polluted beaches.

Hundreds more local residents showed up at the beaches on Saturday and Sunday morning, having not heard about the 'training sessions' and desperate to help in any way they could. They were told by local authorities that their help was not needed, or allowed, and would in fact be unlawful. As many residents watched the oily residue devastate the beaches and wildlife, with a very minimal, and often nonexistent, officially approved clean up effort in progress, their heartbreak turned emotional, often morphing into anger, outrage and disbelief.

"How much do I need to know to pick up tarballs and put them in trash bags?" one would be volunteer commented, "I mean, it's not brain surgery!"

Another concerned citizen, home bought bird net in hand, having been just ejected from an area filled with at least 100 oil covered birds and only three rescue workers, added his own viewpoint. "I'd like to capture some of these dying birds and get them to the animal clean up people, but I'm not wearing clothes that look like a spacesuit, so they (the authorities) don't like it."

These three rescue workers, trained biologists working for California State Parks, did their best, rescuing several injured birds, but they were overwhelmed by the scale of the oil spill, and were in dire need of assistance.

A local rescue worker, frustrated by the lack of resources and manpower available to deal with capturing injured oil covered birds from the shoreline, saw definite need for improvement. He showed me the main technique employed by the rescue workers, which was to sneak up on the birds from behind, and then sprint towards the injured and often slow moving creatures while reaching with nets in a desperate effort to grab the birds before they could run or fly away in instinctual fear. He complained that if the rescue workers had assistance from boats in the water, which could herd the birds towards shore and make capture easier, then many more birds could be saved. But on this day there were no rescue assistance boats available to him on this section of the coast, and most of the birds fled into the poisoned waters in fear and without hope, no diversionary team being present to scare them back toward the shore, towards the rescuer's nets, and possible safety.

Still, the rescue workers toil on, even now, their hazmat suits covered in toxic oil, their boots shining with the shimmer of wet black tar.

A local city vector control worker extends his net to retrieve yet another dead oil covered bird from Bay Area waters

The shoreline shown in the image above, in Berkeley on the east side of the bay, is where many of the birds have come to try and clean themselves before ultimately dying. The bay water here is relatively unaffected by the oil from the spill because it is protected by a land outcropping which is itself coated with oil on its shoreline, and which keeps the more polluted waters away. Some local environmental officials who I talked to at the scene guessed that when birds and seals discover the relatively clean cove, they often stay in an effort to avoid the more toxic environment currently present in the greater bay.

Another dead bird lays lifelessly in a park worker's net

Injured animals who were rescued from the beaches were cleaned by the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at UC Davis. They too were overwhelmed. Local media reported their phone number, 877-823-6926, as the official and only resource available to residents who wanted to report wildlife and birds injured by the spill. Unfortunately, most people who called the line where met with a constant busy signal that was omnipresent throughout the day and night during the weekend. Absent any other official method to report injured wildlife, residents were left without options, and were forced to watch powerlessly as more animals died and the environment became more polluted by the hour.

image credits sustainablepublic.com