Tourism-Dependent Florida Braced For Big Hit As Gulf Oil Spill Reaches Shores

Jun 6, 2010 4 Comments ›› Pat Dollard

Agencie France Presse:

The welcome sign to this sugar-white sand beach resort Sunday signaled the unwelcome arrival of the Gulf’s oil spill eastern front: “Do not pick up oil balls, let the clean-up crew do it.”

Despite the caution, Illinois tourists Taggert and Tammy Schakelford couldn’t help themselves from strolling the water’s edge, picking up pea-sized globules of glistening black oil and depositing them in a clear plastic soda bottle.

“I don’t know,” Taggert said, responding to a question of the apparent futility of his exercise, and what to do with the pickings. “Take it home, I guess. I’m kind of amazed that they haven’t closed the beaches yet.”

The decision would come from the Santa Rosa County Authority, but as of Sunday the beaches remained open.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist said he hoped the impact on his state would not be as severe as the oozing, toxic soup the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has created in marshlands further west.

Florida’s fabled beaches are the top draw of its tourism industry, its number-one money-mover. The state attracts about 80 million visitors a year, bringing in 60 billion dollars, state data show.

“Hopefully,” he said, the oil would not appear in “the way it has been showing up in Louisiana.

“It is easy to clean up off the beaches, as we were able to do this past weekend in Pensacola. We were disappointed that it came on the beach at all but able to clean it up fairly rapidly,” he told CNN.

“It is much more difficult is what we have seen in Louisiana, when it gets into the marshes and the estuaries, once it gets in there, it is very difficult to clean up. We are trying to do the very best we can with the resources that we have,” he said.

Taggert Schakelford said he grew up in the Pensacola area and married Tammy on the Pensacola Fishing Pier in 2004.

Saturday, he surfed in waters here until his eyes began to sting and the contaminated water left a bad taste.

“It’s almost like losing a family member,” he said of the idyllic setting. “You’re angry, upset — that feeling you get in your gut.”

Not only brought in by the tidal waters, seaweed washing up on the beach also carried the orange-brown staining oil globules, deadly for organisms that live on it.

The fishing pier here was doing below-normal business, with barely three dozen anglers on its entire length.

Normally, said Mike Grobstig of Pensacola, the pier would be almost shoulder-to-shoulder with fishermen.

“It will be a disaster for the whole Gulf Coast,” Grobstig said of his concern for both the tourist industry and fishing.

Grobstig, a plumber who just finished work on the newly-opened Jimmy Buffett hotel Margaritaville on the beach, lamented the impending losses. “If it comes in, it’s going to mess the beaches up. You can see the white sand — you know what oil will do to that white sand.”