Born on the Bayou

Let me set the scene before we begin. I’d ask you to close your eyes, but it might be difficult to follow along. I guess you could close one eye…

It’s hot, muggy. Everything around is dense and green. Think 4 lane highway with Amazon jungle on either side. Every car and truck you pass is either pulling a boat on a trailer, or has an official looking decal on the side of it, or both. As you near the marina, there are people everywhere with orange vests and hard hats. Before you can see the water, you see huge barges and tugboats moving in the distance. There are official signs and people in uniform everywhere. No one seems to be doing anything.

This is 7 in the morning every day, at the Venice Marina in southern Louisiana.

I am working for a company called BioDiversity Research Institute (BRI), out of Maine, in the Gulf of Mexico. Our work centers around collecting data on the effects and extent of the impact on birds in the area, due to contact with oil from the Deepwater Horizon. We collect these data for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).


The first rule of working for USFWS is you cannot talk about the work you do for USFWS. 


The second rule of working for USFWS is that YOU CANNOT TALK ABOUT WORK YOU DO FOR USFWS.

Tyler Durden, eat your heart out.

So, instead of putting my way of life in jeopardy by disregarding multiple confidentiality agreements, I’ll concentrate on what it’s like to work in the field for months and months, moving jobs and locations many times each year. Abandoning newly made friendships in order to concentrate on soon to be newly made friendships.

Traveling to far off and exotic places, meeting new and exciting people, and studying their birds.

Private Joker, eat your heart out.

A little about the presence here in the gulf:

There are a lot of people here, maybe 50, working for BRI. There are crews that trap and tag egrets, crews that tag and trap rails, crews that tag and trap pelicans, crews that track birds that have been trapped and tagged, and on and on. You get the picture. This is a logistical nightmare. Or it would be (and it sometimes is) if it weren’t for a team of bureaucracy ninjas. The slice and dice their way through permits and paperwork so we can go out on boats, helicopters, and planes to survey birds. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always go as planned.

It’s not because there is any groups attempting to slow the process purposefully, it’s just that there are SO MANY organizations represented down here. There are more acronyms to remember than you would find in a teenagers text message. NRDA this and LSFW that. It’s overwhelming. Luckily, I am not a bureaucracy ninja. I am but a lowly biologist, which suits me just fine. I live, eat, work among 50 very smart, very dedicated people, who all have wonderful ideas on how to streamline these processes.

Unfortunately, none of that matters, because in order to streamline the process, you would have to get multiple representatives for each of 30 or so organizations in the same room AND somehow have a productive conversation. Since this is less possible than human teleportation or losing weight by eating right and exercising, it’s not difficult to just give up and stop whining about it. Or it SHOULD be that easy. However, the main topic of conversation among the boat captains, inn keepers, and biologists is still, and will continue to be, “Why is it so difficult to recognize the goal, and get everyone on board to achieve it?” Good question.

Short answer:

No one who is granted power relinquishes that power voluntarily. That goes for non-profit organizations doubly. Sometimes it is easy to feel so helpless that any illusion of influence is too tempting to disregard.  Even if it is simply the power to postpone necessary data collection, people and businesses alike will allude themselves into thinking that they are the proverbial center of the universe.  Collective ego.

Oiled birds, eat your hearts out.