Small Kemp's ridley sea turtle recovering from being oiled, at the Audubon Nature Institute in Lousiana. Credit: NOAA

Yesterday, the UK's Guardian newspaper reported what ought to have been a blockbuster enviro-crime revelation: the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had confirmed that BP was burning endangered sea turtles alive along with oil slicks on the Gulf of Mexico.

But so far I can't find any other major English-language news outlet that has run with this story.

"Endangered sea turtles and other marine creatures are being corralled into 500 square-mile "burn fields" and burnt alive in operations intended to contain oil from BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico," claims the paper. "The Obama administration, confirming the kills, said BP was under orders to avoid the turtles. 'My understanding is that protocols include looking for wildlife prior to igniting of oil,' a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said. "We take these things very seriously.'

If this is true, the agency would be validating a rumor that's been racing around the internets for nearly two weeks, fueled (ha) in part by this YouTube video. The Guardian's article has a couple weaknesses, though: that unnamed "spokeswoman," and her verbatim quote that does not actually contain any direct admission about torched sea turtles.

I've put in a call to NOAA to find out more.

Judging from photos out of the Gulf region, it's easy to believe that that untrained eyes would be hard pressed to pick out a glob of oiled turtle from a floating expanse of oil globs.  This helps make the turtle burning rumor seem plausible.

But the absence of definitive proof, in our age of well-distributed image-grabbing technology, is odd enough to make me want to ask more questions. This crisis situation is swarming with hundreds or thousands of responders who have camera-enabled cell phones in their pockets. Given the scope of this potential surveillance -- what my friend and fellow former Worldchanger Jamais Cascio has termed the "participatory panopticon" -- as well as the anger at BP, I have to wonder why no one has yet managed to verifiably photograph or video such cruel, criminal animal abuse.