FILE - In this Sept. 18, 2010, file photo, the Development Driller III, which drilled the relief well and pumped the cement to seal the Macondo well, the source of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil spill, is seen in the Gulf Of Mexico, off the coast of Louisiana.
Eric Gay
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AP
FILE - In this May 5, 2010 file photo by Eric Gay, shrimp boats collect oil with booms near Chandeleur Sound, La. More than two weeks after the explosion, oil had yet to wash ashore, and images of huge ships floating amid a slick above the broken well had grown commonplace. San Antonio-based shooter Eric Gay was sent on a mission to capture the scale of the slow-motion catastrophe. "I had been on helicopter several times trying to show the oil coming to the coast, because we knew it was going to hit at some time," he said. One day, he found it: a massive area of orange swirls against a floating field of black. "I expected to see a big black blob floating out there," he said, "but then it was this orange, swirling thing that looked like something from another planet." Several miles out from land, and with no ships nearby, the image was abstract. Gay flew back out the following day to put the pollution into context. "We noticed this armada of shrimp boats that had been converted" to oil skimmers deploying floating boom, something many shrimpers did to make money while the area was closed to fishing. After shooting them from a few hundred feet above, Gay asked the pilot to move a little higher. "You could see the boats and the orange swirls, and it gave it this strange perspective." The result was a set of surreal, artistic shots. "It's kind of sad that something so tragic looks so beautiful," Gay recalled ... but it was pretty, from a distance."
President-elect Donald Trump vowed to undo a directive Monday by President Joe Biden that would ban oil and natural gas drilling off Florida’s coasts.
During an appearance with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump called Biden’s directive “ridiculous” and said he had the right to “unban” drilling immediately.
“We have oil and gas at a level that nobody else has. And we're going to take advantage of it,” Trump said.
Biden’s directive covered about 334 million acres of the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf from Canada to the southern tip of Florida and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. It also included areas off the U.S. West Coast.
“We do not need to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy, or between keeping our ocean healthy, our coastlines resilient, and the food they produce secure and keeping energy prices low. Those are false choices,” Biden said in a statement. “Protecting America’s coasts and ocean is the right thing to do, and will help communities and the economy to flourish for generations to come.”
In 2018, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment to prohibit oil and gas drilling in state waters, which extend three nautical miles from the shore on the Atlantic coast and nine nautical miles on the gulf coast.
