2010-05-31 CNN
It was worse right back there where it's super thick, man. I've never seen anything like it. It just rolled in on. It’s quite unreal.
Oh man, look at that streak. Look at the holes off of those. It's thick, thick, thick.
Like mud.
That's unreal. This is ugly. This is really ugly.
Ugly is definitely an understatement. And we're only 12 miles from shore. By far, the thickest oil we've seen yet. This is just disturbing. Check it out. I mean, the oil, layers of oil actually building on each other in a putty-like form. This definitely is not dispersed. It's barely weathered at all. It almost looks like it's fresh, fresh from the pipe. Some areas of the oil are thicker than others. This is only the western edge of the slick. We are still not even 50 miles from the site of the spill. Unbelievable.
Our little armada pauses. We're out here with five other boats, and all of them have this nasty oil stuck to the hull. That's going to be a chore getting off. This boat just across the way, those guys are lowering a submersible camera to take a look at what the water and oil mixture looks like below the surface.
Boats are carrying scientists peering into and under the oil. Dr. Ian McDonald takes samples back to his lab in Florida, while Dr. Doug Inkley patrols for the National Wildlife Federation. A dead eel floats toward our boat.
Do you have a jar large enough to put this in?
It too is taken as a sample, now headed to the lab for a closer look. Minutes later, something else is in the water. This one is alive.
That animal might be in a lot of trouble.
You normally don't see sharks like this running around on the surface, but this animal looks like it's in distress.
The shark dives as we approach. Along the way, we see other sea creatures struggling in the oil like this baby crab. What's on the surface is easy to see.
The animals like this that are out in the open ocean and we don't see them washed up. How do you assess that? You have a shark that dies in the water here and sinks to the bottom. Where's the assessment on that? How do you assess that?
Can't count it. Much like the oil still spewing from the well, the amount of wildlife lost here may never be known. Rob Marciano, CNN, Venice, Louisiana.