Pooped And Proud

Posted Sep 15, 2007 by Alex Vila

Updated Sep 15, 2007 at 10:36 PM

Reporter Rich Mullins helps the Coast Guard scrub bird droppings off of a buoy. Photo by Crystal Lauderdale / Tampa Tribune

By Rich Mullins / The Tampa Tribune

Motoring in a small Coast Guard craft through the waves off St. Petersburg, Greg Bruzik scans the horizon and spots his nemesis.

“There he is, Enemy No. 1,” says Bruzik, a Coast Guard petty officer second class. The enemy is not a Colombian speedboat full of cocaine or a container ship full of terrorist bombs. This nemesis is black and white, bigger than a duck and a federally protected species.

The osprey circles us, menacingly, I think, as we motor up to a signal buoy a couple of miles offshore. Bruzik explains that it’s entirely possible this osprey is the main culprit fouling all over this buoy, Bruzik’s buoy, and those biologically natural droppings are a problem of major proportions.

Now before you flip the page to enjoy a story of less graphic detail, consider whether you like having gasoline in your car. If so, it’s worth giving a little respect to Bruzik and other Coast Guard crews in one of the least glamorous corners of the U.S. military armada.

Here’s why. Florida receives nearly all its gasoline by tanker barge from Texas, and those barges steer their way into Tampa Bay through a gantlet of narrow channels dug in the sea floor - channels marked by a constellation of signal posts, blinking lights and other markers. Bruzik and other Coast Guard personnel fix those buoys and signals and generally battle osprey guano and other less pleasant debris.

Without the deliveries, you have no regular unleaded. Enjoy your walk to work.

The First Stop

“On a really hot day, the guano kicks up into a dust, and it’s pretty nasty - a biohazard,” Bruzik explains as we jump from a crimson Coast Guard boat onto a signal platform covered with paper-white bird guano, three inches deep in some spots.

Several signal lights hang off the platform like electronic gargoyles on a gothic church, each powered by a battery and a jet-black solar panel. During daylight, the solar panel charges the battery so the light shines all night.

Tanker captains and barge pilots need to line up those lights to ensure they’re dead center in the path to their dock. Cover that solar panel with bird guano, and the solar panel has about as much electrical horsepower as a plank of plywood - zip.

Sure, tankers may have GPS to guide their way, but GPS is not foolproof, and without these signal lights, a tanker pilot may be left knowing that Tampa Bay is simply “that-away, maybe, probably.”

Scrub, Scrub

The platform on our list today is about a mile offshore and rises about 20 feet above the waterline. It’s held up by several tall poles sunk into the ocean floor. Climbing on top, our feet crunch into a combination of dry guano and fresher deposits slippery as grease.

Mere words fail to convey the aromatic trauma of inhaling a lungful of guano dust. Imagine, if you will, a cloud of pure ammonia, rotten fish fumes and dust from lizard dung left in the sun for a week. Duty to journalism prevents me from jumping into the cool water below to escape the gut-turning stench.

Adding to the aroma on some days, osprey leave half-eaten or regurgitated fish on the platforms to dine on later at their leisure. For protection, we wear navy blue coveralls, and we could wear latex rubber gloves and dust masks - which is lovely to have on in 95-degree heat.

Bruzik hands over our super-duper high-tech tools of the day: a white, plastic scrub brush and a bucket of sea water.

“Here you go; have at it,” he says with no small grin, pointing to the solar panel.

I scrub off a layer of guano an osprey recently left on the solar panel and wash the panel to a shiny gleam. Bruzik wrenches open the battery box and clips an electrical tester to the wires. Plenty of voltage now, he says.

“This is going to save a life, right?” I say.

He chuckles. “Yeah.”

Outnumbered

This line of work makes it easy to start hating ospreys. One cruises by, and I decide I rather dislike its character. It probably has similar thoughts.

I’m in its living room, essentially - me and my Coast Guard crew. Florida is its habitat, and these platforms provide wonderfully luxurious homes for roosting midocean. Anyone damaging ospreys or their nests risks serious attention from a federal prosecutor.

So, Coast Guard crews can’t simply blast away at the osprey with automatic weaponry, as much as that might improve their mood after a day spent elbow-deep in guano.

Instead, Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg, which patrols much of the west Florida coastline, has a crew of 23 people whose full-time duty is to maintain 1,400 signals and buoys from Cedar Key to south of Fort Myers.

Oh, and then there are the drunk boaters.

It’s a big ocean. Yet, boaters frequently manage to steer into the buoys and signal posts. In that event, they’re supposed to stop, call the Coast Guard and confess the crime so the Guard can repair the signal before the next tanker of premium unleaded wanders into port.

“I’ve never seen so many discrepancies anywhere,” says Christopher J. Brown, the Coast Guard officer in charge of the Aids to Navigation group, which works with signals and buoys. “Discrepancy” is Brown’s diplomatic way of describing signals all busted up by boaters, covered with osprey goop or otherwise damaged by Florida’s natural or unnatural phenomena.

One might think some nice, sharp wire spikes bolted on the platforms would dissuade osprey from landing there. Nope, Brown says. Doing his best “osprey squatting” impression, Brown scoots his feet back and forth and squats down saying, “They just slip their feet between the wires and sit.”

Benefits Ahoy

Still, as a profession, Coast Guard work can’t be beat, Brown says. The pay is better than many American blue-collar workers would receive: about $20,000 per year for starting enlisted staff up to about $40,000 per year for higher-ranking staff. Plus, members receive a housing subsidy to defray rent or mortgage payments and gold-standard federal health care benefits that would astound any human resources chief in the private sector.

Also, depending on years of service, rank and decorations, retiring members can receive a large part of their salaries for the rest of their lives, plus medical benefits for life for themselves and their spouse.

Compared with other military jobs, Coast Guard crews have a very low risk of finding themselves shooting at insurgents in Baghdad. Yet, they have many perks of military work that appeal to adrenaline junkies and ocean fanatics. Want to chase drug runners in speedboats? Sure. Want to protect wildlife? Why not? Want to jump from helicopters into the Arctic? Sign up here.

Motoring back to the dock after cleaning buoys, I decided the job might not be for me, full time, but for anyone looking to spend time on the water and serve their country, there are lots and lots of buoys waiting out there.

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com.