NACOGDOCHES — Dave Morrison is an eternal optimist. In his line of work, you have to take the good with the bad, and ultimately hope things shake out for the best when bad things happen. Mother Nature can be demanding that way.

Morrison is waterfowl program leader with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Like many duck and goose guys, he is anxiously waiting and hoping for the best as crews work tirelessly to cap a seafloor oil gusher that has been spewing toxic crude into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months. The leak is the byproduct of a tragic explosion that killed 11 men and sank the Deepwater Horizon oil platform about 50 miles off the Louisiana coastline on April 20.

Millions of gallons of oil have since spilled into the ocean, and the results have not been pretty.

In a nutshell, the spill has created virtual havoc for many coastal dwellers and communities from Louisiana to Florida.

While there is no good time for a disaster, the timing of this one could not have been worse. The largest oil spill in U.S. history occurred just ahead of the annual hurricane season, and this year’s forecast has been projected to be a volatile one. Some forecasters are saying there will be as many as 20 named storms this year, with several predicted to make landfall in the U.S.

Offshore workers dealing with the spill dodged a bullet last week when the season’s first named storm barreled out of the Caribbean and skirted southwest before slamming ashore in Mexico south of Brownsville, bringing with it storm surge of 3-5 feet.

Although the storm stymied relief efforts in the Gulf, it could have been much worse. Had Hurricane Alex set its sights on the upper Texas coast or Louisiana, it may have gained strength and packed a significant storm surge.

The surge could have driven oil several miles inland,  magnifying the damage already done to fragile coastal habitat and marshlands that are so vital to wetland birds and millions of waterfowl that winter there each year.

Waterfowl experts believe as many as 13 million waterfowl will spend the winter along the Gulf Coast in some years. According to Ducks Unlimited figures, as many as 4.7 million waterfowl winter in southeast Louisiana, 4.5 million in southwest Louisiana, about 20,000 in the Mississippi Sound and Mobile Bay, and as many as 250,000 in Florida wetlands and bays.

A major storm surge could bring large quantities of oil ashore and do significant damage to coastal habitat by coating and killing plants. With plant life gone, exposed soils would be subject to erosion and critical wetlands could be lost forever.

Current estimates indicate that oil has already moved into the coastal marshes of Louisiana and that nearly 200 miles of coastline between Louisiana and Florida have already been impacted.

First flights of ducks will will begin migrating south from northern breeding grounds sometime around mid-August.

Blue-winged teal are among the first to arrive around coastal areas and interior marshlands, followed by green-winged teal, gadwall, pintail, scaup, redhead, canvasback and wigeon.

We have all seen the photos of brown pelicans coated in oil since the ‘Horizon disaster. Experts say the potential is there for the same thing to happen to thousands of ducks.  The worst case scenario would arise in the event of major hurricane with a significant storm surge that pushes oil into interior freshwater marshes and lakes that are heavily utilized by dabbling ducks like pintails, blue-winged tail, wigeon, gadwall and shovelers.

“It could be devastating if we get big storm surge down there,” Morrison said.

Diving ducks that utilize open, coastal bays where most of the oil is currently located also could be impacted. Luckily, however, major flights of the aforementioned birds won’t arrive until later in the fall.

 Morrison and other biologists are hopeful the leak will be capped and the clean-up effort will be well underway before the largest flights of canvasbacks, redheads, scaup and other divers begin arriving in November and December.

“That would be the ideal scenario, but at this juncture there are so many unknowns that it is impossible to predict what is going to happen,” Morrison said. “Hopefully, they will be able get the leak capped soon, and then we can reassess things and find out what our biggest problems are.”

Dr. Frank Rhower of Delta Waterfowl recently addressed myriad concerns in a Q&A news release published on the organization’s web site, deltawaterfowl.org.

Rhower said ducks that come in contact with oil face two major threats.

 “First, the oil disrupts their feather coat and makes ducks vulnerable to cold water that normally presents little risk,” Rhower said. “Second, in the process of trying to clean and waterproof their feathers, many birds actually ingest toxins that are in the hydrocarbon soup called crude oil.  For ducks, the first issue may be more problematic. The midsummer conditions in Louisiana are anything but cold. But ducks will face cold coastal waters in late fall and winter, and that’s a threat to them. Oil disrupts the boundary layer of aquatic birds’ feathers, so their normally water-tight feathering allows water to make skin contact. Warm water isn’t the problem; cold is. Ducks whose skin is exposed to cold water can actually freeze to death in short order.”

 Rhower said it is likely that migrant waterfowl will relocate to different areas to find food if Louisiana’s freshwater marshes become too contaminated.

 “Ducks in the winter are pretty adaptable and will move around to find food and to avoid disturbance,” he said. “However, I do worry ducks will use their traditional habitats and get oiled before they figure out there’s a scarcity of food. After all, ducks looking for food tend to move around a lot, which surely increases their odds of finding an oil patch.”