Saving marine invertebrates from gulf oil spill takes some backbone

Thousands of people have tried, in their own quixotic ways, to help BP protect wildlife and clean up crude in the Gulf of Mexico after the worst oil disaster in the country’s history.

There were those who shaved their dogs and sent the hair south for the company to use to soak up the oil. And there were inventors who flew to Louisiana hoping that their cleanup gadgets would catch BP’s eye. A Taiwanese billionaire retrofitted a giant tanker to skim oil from the ocean.

And then there’s Jack Rudloe, who’s determined to protect vulnerable and important sea life — and his business — all on his own.

Rudloe, 67, wants to save the gulf’s mollusks, shrimp, crabs, seahorses and other invertebrates from what he sees as potential extinction. He’s dubbed the project Noah’s Ark because he plans to build tanks to hold some of the most common species for the duration of the spill. The effort hasn’t attracted as many news cameras as Kevin Costner’s oil separating machine or the volunteers relocating sea turtle eggs. But to Rudloe, it’s every bit as important.

“From the way they’ve been responding, you’d think there were only three types of animals in the ocean: turtles, birds and whales,” Rudloe said from the backyard of his lab in rural Florida. “But what are we going to do about the invertebrates?”

Rudloe’s plan is to build a system of tanks in his backyard that can keep the creatures supplied with clean saltwater. His goal is to collect about a dozen species of invertebrates, store them in the tanks and release them back into the sea when the oil is gone. If petroleum — or the dispersants used to dilute it — harms the sea’s smallest creatures, the turtles, fish and whales that depend on them for food could die too, he said. Rudloe sees the hundreds of animals he will collect as the raw material that could help repopulate the gulf.

“We’re building the world’s most expensive insurance policy,” said Rudloe, who has a bushy mustache and often walks around in muddied pants and shoes. “We’re preparing for an attack.”

His project has irritated some in this coastal town of antique shops and fish restaurants. So far, the closest oil has washed up in Pensacola, 180 miles to the west. Some refer to Rudloe much in the same way people reacted to Noah in the biblical story — with scorn.

“Jack is an extremist. He’s convinced the oil is here,” said Paige Killeen, who runs a drive-through liquor store in town.

Talking about the spill gives tourists the perception that the town is tainted, said Killeen, whose business is down 30% this year.

“He’s a businessman who wants money for his business,” she said.

Rudloe’s business is the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories, a venture he created in 1963 with the encouragement of author John Steinbeck, who became interested in sea creatures after writing “Cannery Row.” The lab collects and sells marine life to research institutions around the country and runs an aquarium that takes in 18,000 visitors a year. Rudloe says he works with 1,300 labs and educational institutions around the country, sending them mollusks, crabs and other species.

The specimens Rudloe sells, which grow only in the warm waters of the gulf, are instrumental in research for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease drugs, said Valdosta State University chemist Thomas J. Manning. He uses Rudloe’s bryozoans — sea animals that look a bit like plants — for research.

The Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory, just 25 miles southeast of Rudloe’s lab, is also trying to retrofit its operation to ensure that oily seawater won’t taint experiments run by its seven resident scientists.

But Rudloe has only five staff members and no funding except for donations from visitors (he said he applied for $200,000 from BP, and was denied). He said he’s already spent $100,000 of his own money on the project, building tanks, hiring plumbers and storing clean water.

“The BP approach is that the oil comes in and kills everything, and then you have a legitimate claim to money,” he said. “We’re saying we’re going to do whatever we can before the oil gets here.”

New problems seem to emerge daily. Pipes have burst. Water stopped flowing. The aquarium’s octopus died when a temporary pump failed during the night.

Preparing a vast supply of oil-free water is tricky. Rudloe first stored 100,000 gallons in tanks in an abandoned shrimp farm. But the tanks sprung dozens of leaks, despite weeks of scrubbing and repair. His latest plan is to use an oil-water separator that will clean the seawater pumped in from the gulf.

“Everybody has just been working to the breaking point,” said Rudloe’s wife, Anne, a retired marine biologist who wrote her dissertation on horseshoe crabs. The lab’s staff has been constructing the ark and spending early mornings collecting specimens.

“Obviously our little aquarium could not restock the Gulf of Mexico,” she said. “But the idea that some people can take some action and try to do something that’s helpful is something that people are responding to.”

Animals such as mussels, oysters and clams are especially at risk because they are filter feeders that draw water into their gills to extract nutrients. That means they could be sucking oil into their systems, said Dana Wetzel, program manager at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla.

But there are billions of creatures scattered throughout the ocean, and saving them all is virtually impossible, she said.

“Although it’s a wonderful idea, this Noah’s Ark thing, to throw some things on board and save them, I don’t think it’s possible,” said Wetzel, who is not familiar with Rudloe’s project. “There are too many species and no way to ensure that you can replicate a natural environment.”

Wetzel does not know of any efforts that focus on rescuing invertebrates.

“Sea turtles and dolphins and whales and sharks seem to draw people’s passions,” she said. “People aren’t generally passionate about an oyster.”

Regardless of the difficulties, Rudloe says he’s embarking on a worthwhile task. Without invertebrates, whole species in the gulf would be without food, he said, throwing a handful of fiddler crabs to a sea turtle swimming in a tank in his yard.

Without invertebrates, the lab he’s worked decades to build would have to close, as would the aquarium in its backyard. That would be another blow to a town that houses an abandoned motel and a shuttered restaurant, with more businesses in danger of closing after a sluggish tourist season.

Doing nothing is too big a risk, he said. With hurricane season underway, he worries about a big storm blowing through town and bringing oil up into the marshes, the kind of storm that came for the project’s biblical namesake.

“Right now we’re playing Russian roulette,” he said. “All it would take is one hurricane.”

alana.semuels@latimes.com