However, according to Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, in a statement in the Miami Herald on Dec. 30, in her estimation it wasn't BP and the biggest accidental oil spill that the world has ever seen or the wanton use, with her approval, of toxic chemical dispersants that was responsible for the dead turtles.
It was fishermen.
Last year's BP oil spill resulted in 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 million gallons of petroleum products being released into the Gulf of Mexico every day for three months.
It was the largest accidental oil spill that has ever been inflicted on any ocean anywhere. It resulted in floating oil slicks and subsurface oil plumes that were hundreds of miles in extent.
Exacerbating a horrendous situation, with the blessing of the feds the people at BP sprayed and injected millions of gallons of chemical dispersants, chemicals the use of which has been outlawed abroad because of their toxic environmental effects, into the Gulf waters that they had already done such a thorough job of contaminating to "break up" the oil in some totally misguided effort based on "out of sight, out of mind."
Needless to say, none of this was particularly good for the flora or fauna of the Gulf. This fact was brought home by the 600 or so dead turtles that were collected from the areas affected by the spill and by the dispersants used to "control" it.
Now anyone who has followed Ms. Lubchenco's career, either before or since taking control at NOAA, wouldn't be surprised to discover that she would be willing to hold fishermen responsible for anything bad that's happened since the day that primitive humankind discovered that fish were good to eat.
But her attempt to pin the blame for the dead sea turtles on fishermen is stretching the bounds of credulity farther than she's ever stretched them before (and that's up to and including the prediction that our oceans would be populated with nothing but jellyfish at some point in the future because of fishing.)
Her statement about the turtle deaths and fishing was "while nearly all the rescued sea turtles were visibly oiled, to our surprise, most of the dead stranded sea turtles had no observable oil on their bodies and were in good health prior to their death. Necropsies (autopsies on animals) on more than half of 600 carcasses point to the possibility that a majority may have drowned in fishing gear."
So we have thousands of Gulf fishermen who, because of BP's actions and the government's lack of effective oversight, lost their markets and at least half a year's worth of fishing and were actually getting some well-deserved public sympathy.
Yet Ms. Lubchenco appears unwilling to put up with that, so with the careful use of words that no one will be able to hold her accountable for, she seems to be doing what she can to stop that sympathy its tracks.
And, as an added benefit, she'll probably be able to get rid of even more fishing boats, and fishermen, in the bargain.
As is becoming increasingly evident, it's well past the time when the powers that be in the Department of Commerce, the Obama Administration and in Congress should give serious consideration to the real-world implications of having someone with such a profound bias against fishermen and fishing as Ms. Lubchenco so obviously does at the helm of the NOAA.
After decades of demonstrating that they are world leaders in the conservation of species after species, our fishermen deserve more from Washington than a target painted on their collective backs.
Nils Stolpe of SavingSeafood.org is a longtime fishing industry consultant and an investigative reproter and colunnist with National Fisherman magazine.