We Were At Dauphin Island Thursday & Friday,

and we didn't see any evidence of oil on the beach. There were lots of emergency clean-up crews just hanging out, and the bayside harbor was behind a boom. We went swimming at the public beach Friday morning pretty much exactly where they were finding tar balls on Saturday. As a devil's advocate thought, it's not impossible that scattered oil tars could come from sources other than the spill; there was also an unusual amount of trash along the beach such as fresh chopped lettuce and onion peel that could come from a ship. But, of course, with ~200,000 gallons a day of crude leaking not that far away, the tar balls may well be from that new, improved source of pollution. Dauphin Island businesses have been dying since the leak began as tourists stay away in droves. I can only hope that the leak is stopped quickly, and that various crude oil fractions don't hit the beaches on Dauphin Island or anywhere for that matter.