I was unhappy with the media coverage and decided to put up or shut up. A group got together and took a trip to Louisiana and Alabama (we're in FL and no oil has washed up yet). In the places that have oil it's worse than we imagined, but in the places that don't no one is visiting and the local economies are being destroyed. It's a tough situation to say the least.

I imagine that once the leak is fixed the politicians and the media will move on, leaving the fishing communities high and dry, and facing a marine ecosystem collapse similar to the aftermath of Exxon Valdez.

BP will probably do some extremely cursory and cosmetic amount of cleanup on a few beaches and then declare the Gulf of Mexico clean. I expect many of the compensation schemes promised will not materialize, or fall far short of expectations. Rather like in the financial sector, the profits will be privately accrued and the disasters left for the public to deal with.

It's also tourist communities, which are abundant on the gulf coast. They make most of their money in the same few months that oil is spilling and losing just one season has a huge impact.

We talked to a souvenir shop owner in Alabama who was on a [still] pristine beach but was down $50,000 already in the first month of his peak season. All the toursits thought his beach was oily and stayed away.

I'm a USCG licesned boat captain and I may suggest you start checking out some of the professional fishery oceanic graphic services as they have a much more accurate version of the actual spill as opposed to what you're seeing on the news

Check out Roffs in particular: www.roffs.com/deepwaterhorizon.html

I should also add that I'm out of Destin, Florida.

And yes, there are dead dolphin, whales (mainly finback), and turtles floating around.

If you'd be interested in taking us out, we'd definitely be interested. Boats are very hard to come by in the area.

your thread exemplifies how the Internet is awesome :)

I just wanted to say, thank you for doing this.

It's something I also wanted to do, but was unable to find a group of friends that were willing.

Hell, I live in Oklahoma. We have no beaches, but I still appreciate what he's doing.

Thanks for the hard work.

I'm going to be a bit of an echo. "Thank you for doing this."

I live in San Antonio, Tx so I must admit I sometimes I forget about our beaches and the Gulf. I've been totally fed up with the crap coverage and the crazy restrictions they're putting on public beaches along the gulf. It's just crazy to think how much damage is happening.

The more people covering the spill the better, I'm going down in a few days and plan on taking a detour into Louisiana and seeing how many pictures I can take.

If you live on the gulf coast, would it be more appropriate to say that the oil spill is covering you?