Mikeal Berthelot, Jr., was navigating the mouth of the Mississippi River in his shrimp boat, a stretch of water he’d traversed many times before. The water was calm. The sun beat down. His deckhand was making a peanut butter sandwich. 

 Then the boat slammed into something they couldn’t see. The crash threw Berthelot Jr. forward. As he grasped for support, his hand shattered a glass pane in front of the steering wheel. 

“My boat is stuck on something,” he told his father over the phone. “It went through the bottom of the hull.”  

 Within minutes, the engine room filled with water. Within an hour, the boat had sunk.  

 Berthelot didn’t know it at the time, but he had struck an old oil well, drilled more than a half-century ago. Back then, the site was surrounded by marsh.  Today, it’s i

See Full Page