Greetings Friends of Gulf Specimen:
Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory has been in business for over 44 years in Panacea, Florida and this year, with the Deep Horizon Oil Spill, it was the most challenging and difficult year of all. For months it appeared that our beloved Gulf, with its vast resources of marine life was imperiled, and that any minute now oil would come gushing into Dickerson Bay, smothering the marshes, marine life, and clogging our sea water intake pipes. After nearly a half century of continuous operation, we couldn't risk having tanks of dead animals swilling in petroleum. The eighteen thousand school children and visitors who came to Gulf Specimen on field trips would no longer enjoy seeing live octopuses and picking up fiddler crabs and horseshoe crabs.
Starting in May we worked to exhaustion in hundred degree heat, digging up every pipe that we laid down over the past forty years and installing new water collection systems, filters and storage tanks installed so we could function as a closed system, and no longer depend on the Gulf for a constant source of clean sea water. Fifty-seven volunteers dug ditches, and eight paid laborers and our staff laid pipe as the unstoppable well gushed oil into the Gulf. Our friends held art auctions, entertainment events and raised funds. BP refused to pay because the oil hadn't reached us, not agreeing with Benjamin Franklin's saying, "An ounce of prevention (and blow out preventers) is worth a pound of cure". Apparantly Kenneth Feinberg of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility didn't believe it either since he just denied our claim.
We're submitting a new claim, but we're not holding our breath. If it weren't for your generous private donations and grants from Jimmy Buffet's "Singing for Change" Foundation, his sister Lucy, and her Lulu's Restaurant and Marina in Gulf Shores, Alabama and the Sea Turtle Conservancy, Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory would have gone bankrupt. Instead we have emerged stronger and better than ever. But there is much to do and we need your tax-deductable contributions. The Gulf has to be restored. Through our Operation Noah's Ark we will be re-seeding bays and estuaries with marine life, and growing oysters on trees (see our http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z-2UtJSjwk) We are building a mobile touch tank to bring the message to schools that cannot afford to visit Gulf Specimen on field trips. Please help with our dream by going to our website and making a tax-deductable contribution our Pay Pal account on Gulf Specimen Marine Lab's website www.gulfspecimen.org before the year 2010 draws to a close.
Many thanks,
Jack Rudloe, President
Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories, Inc.
PO Box 237
222 Clark Drive
Panacea FL 32346
Phone 850-984-5297
Fax: 850-984-5233
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