**Extremely Disturbing Video of the Real Impact Of The Oil Spill on Wildlife**

WARNING:
This is a disturbing piece of video and animal lovers will be heartbroken & enraged!

If a picture is worth a thousand words then this video is worth a million or more.


http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/raw-video-spill-s-threat-to-wildlife-turns-real-20186003

Impacts of spill on Gulf Coast wildlife quickly coming into focus


The wildlife apocalypse along the Gulf Coast that everyone has feared for weeks is fast becoming a terrible reality.


Pelicans struggle to free themselves from oil, thick as tar, that gathers in hip-deep pools, while others stretch out useless wings, feathers dripping with crude.


Dead birds and dolphins wash ashore, coated in the sludge. Seashells that once glinted pearly white under the hot June sun are stained crimson.


In Louisiana, along the beach at Queen Bess Island, oil pooled several feet deep, trapping birds against unused containment boom. 


The futility of their struggle was confirmed when Joe Sartore, a National Geographic photographer, sank thigh deep in oil on nearby East Grand Terre Island and had to be pulled from the tar.


"I would have died if I would have been out here alone," he said.


With no oil response workers on Queen Bess, Plaquemines Parish coastal zone management director P.J. Hahn decided he could wait no longer, pulling an exhausted brown pelican from the oil, the slime dripping from its wings.


"We're in the sixth week, you'd think there would be a flotilla of people out here," Hahn said. "As you can see, we're so far behind the curve in this thing."
Gilly Llewellyn, oceans program leader with the World Wildlife Fund in Australia, said she observed the same behavior by dolphins following a 73-day spill last year in the Timor Sea.


"A heartbreaking sight," Llewellyn said. "And what we managed to see on the surface was undoubtedly just a fraction of what was happening."


The prospect left fishing guide Marino shaking his head, as he watched the oil washing into a marsh and over the body of a dead pelican. Species like shrimp and crab flourish here, finding protection in the grasses. Fish, birds and other creatures feed here.
"It's going to break that cycle of life," Marino said. "It's like pouring gas in your aquarium. What do you think that's going to do?"

NOLA.com



Latest Gulf bird numbers: 724 collected, 547 dead, 177 alive oiled, 25 released to date:
IBRRC.org