Oil-spill sludge hits Mustang Island Tar balls from fuel leak in Galveston Bay washing up nearly 200 miles away and sooner than expected

A worker gathers oil that spilled onto the sands of the Texas City dike at the site of the wrecked barge that leaked fuel into the Houston Ship Channel, Monday, March 24, 2014, in Texas City. Thousands of gallons of tar-like oil spilled into the major U.S. shipping channel after a barge ran into a ship Saturday. less A worker gathers oil that spilled onto the sands of the Texas City dike at the site of the wrecked barge that leaked fuel into the Houston Ship Channel, Monday, March 24, 2014, in Texas City. Thousands of ... more Photo: Karen Warren, Associated Press Photo: Karen Warren, Associated Press Image 1 of / 90 Caption Close Oil-spill sludge hits Mustang Island 1 / 90 Back to Gallery

Tar balls washed up in Mustang Island State Park Sunday as oil from last week's spill in Galveston Bay continues to slide down the coast.

Lt. Tyrone Conner of the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed clean-up crews were dispatched to the popular camping and swimming spot on the barrier island near Corpus Christi, about 200 miles from the site of the March 22 spill.

"The tar balls are about the size of a quarter up to 3 inches," Conner said.

Nearly 170,000 gallons of bunker fuel spilled in Galveston Bay when a ship collided with a barge last Saturday. Currents and winds pulled some of the spill out into the Gulf. Federal and state officials said they are tracking the slick's movement.

Mustang Island State Park's superintendent, Damon Reeves, said experts had not expected the sludge to arrive until later in the week, but it rolled in sooner by attaching itself to rafts of marine debris floating out in the bay. This debris field is composed of seaweed as well as branches and other vegetation that washes down rivers into the bay.

A crew of about 90 workers had been deployed to clean up the tar balls that are soiling a 22-mile stretch of coast from Port Aransas to North Padre, he said.

At the state park, workers managed to clean the tar from about a mile of the park's 5 miles of sandy beach. They worked from noon until dusk on Sunday and will return Monday to clear the rest, he said.

"It doesn't look like there's much more coming behind this first wave of sludge, but we'll be out there reassessing tomorrow," he added.

Luckily, the sludge arrived after the hordes of Spring Break tourists had returned home. "Swimmers were advised to stay out of the water Sunday. But we saw a lot fewer on the beach than we usually do," he said.

The park is an ecologically sensitive barrier island that provides a nesting ground for turtles and shore birds.

"This is a significant spill. The last one that was worse than this occurred about seven years ago," Reeves said.

'Serious' for birds

To date, he's only discovered a few dead birds that washed ashore covered in black goo. However, he believes these birds met their fate days earlier near the Houston Ship Channel and were carried there by the ocean current.

Tony Amos, director of the Animal Rehabilitation Keep and a research fellow doing long-term observations on area Gulf beaches at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas, said the oil washing up will have an effect on local bird populations.

"It is getting more and more concentrated as it travels further south," Amos said.

Sandpipers show signs of having tar on feathers and feet, he said.

"As they are preening this stuff, they are ingesting it. This is serious." Amos said. "Even though some are not fully covered in it, they are on their way north, where they breed, and will transport it to their nesting grounds."

Where to next?

The U.S. Coast Guard and Texas General Land Office, among others, responded to the spill's first new landfall on Thursday, when oil arrived just south of the ecologically sensitive Matagorda Bay.

In a news release Saturday night, the joint command said it was contacting cities and counties south of Matagorda Bay in anticipation of the oil's arrival.

Conner said Sunday that the joint command for the oil response, whose cleanup operations moved to Port O'Connor, was waiting for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to provide new projections of where oil might move next and how much was left drifting at sea.

This report contains material from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.