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ABC anchor Diane Sawyer obtained scuba videotape of underwater conditions 20 miles off shore. "Emulsified oil," was how the diver put it, showing sharks swimming through plumes of oil droplets, jellyfish with clogged tendrils. BP CEO Tony Hayward told ABC' Jeffrey Kofman that the Corexit dispersant that BP was using to break the oil down into these droplets is "no more harmful than dish soap." CBS' White House correspondent Chip Reid (no link) quoted the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that Corexit is toxic, "dangerous not only to humans but to animals, sea life."
NBC's Anne Thompson journeyed out to the site of the leak itself where she showed us "the armada of ships and rigs" that BP has assembled to work on the seabed a mile below. "The Gulf is a Red Sea," she showed us. "It is bleeding oil." With the shrimp fishery closed because of toxins in the food chain, CBS' Mark Strassmann described the response: "Local fishermen, mostly shrimpers, paid by BP to collect oil, were fed up with BP's clean-up so they reorganized and rezoned the response and put boats and booms where they mattered most." The only trouble was with that "paid by BP line"--"they have in some cases worked for a couple of weeks and have yet to get paid."
NBC's Michelle Kosinski updated us on the tourist beaches of Grand Isle. She found them "eerily devoid of life…the only thing you see moving in that water is globs of oil." A sand berm has been built to block the pollution from the shore. She showed us the seaward side--"an absolutely putrid oily mess."
"While beaches can be cleaned up, marshes cannot," noted ABC's Ryan Owens, "and they make up most of Louisiana's coastline." He covered Bobby Jindal, the state's Republican Governor, as he demanded more booms, more skimmers, more vacuums, more barges: "Every day that this oil sits and waits for clean-up is one more day that more of our marsh dies."
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