So I'm finally home after a weeklong gruelling trip to Orlando. Thought I'd come home to find nothing but peace, but I'm in for a "crude" awakening- a cargo ship has hit one of the towers of the Bay Bridge and spilled tens of thousands of gallons of oil smack dab into the heart of the San Francisco Bay.
This is hard enough to watch on TV, but when you see it with your own eyes, it just makes your brain hurt... it is mind-boggling how one human mistake can cause such vast devastation to our environment and our livelihood. Even though San Francisco is an urban area, there are numerous bird refuges in the area, which are being threatened (if not already oil-soaked) while we speak. Most if not all of the beach parks in the area that you've seen on our blog has been closed due to contamination, and every life in the Bay- be it people or bird or fish or dog- in ways you can or can't imagine are being affected (e.g. crabbing season is delayed and a triathlon is cancelled).
This is Point Isabel, the dog park we frequent with Bryson, partially closed due to the oil slick around the shore. Usually dogs frolick off-leash in this park, the day we visited most dogs are put back on leash by their owners, not wanting their dogs to dive into the oil-slicked Bay.
The dark patch you see along the horizon and in the picture with Bryson below is the oil spill, spreading every minute to every corner of the Bay (Bryson is thankfully quite oblivious to all these). In the other picture below, you can see the yellow boom set out to prevent the oil from drifting further into the marshland at Point Isabel, where many water fowls call home. It's not too successful though as you can see oil slick on both sides of the boom... It literally makes your stomach flip when you look over to the birds nesting in the water just yards away.
On a lighter note, there was a little something I was happy to find awaiting me at home:
Hee hee, our new Corgimobile license plate holder. Now, that's a proper ride for Bryson.
