BP says containment cap is capturing more oil
Residents along the Gulf Coast are increasingly realizing it's going to be a long time before their home areas are what they used to be.
Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen plans to give an update on the oil containment effort this morning at the White House. He warned yesterday that the overall battle is likely to stretch into the fall.
Twenty-three-year-old biology graduate Kelcey Forrestier of New Orleans had already reached that conclusion.
She visited Florida's Okaloosa Island over the weekend as tar balls began washing ashore. She says the oil "has to go somewhere, and it's going to come to the Gulf beaches."
A ruptured wellhead has been spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico since a BP rig explosion in April. A device began capturing some oil last week and is slowly siphoning off more of the flow.
BP: Gulf oil spill costs have reached $1.25B
BP says the cost of the company's response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has reached about $1.25 billion.
The figure company announced the total in a news release Monday. BP says the figure does not include $360 million for a project to build six sand berms meant to protect Louisiana's wetlands from spreading oil.
BP says a containment cap is capturing more and more of the gushing oil.
The inverted funnel-like cap is being closely watched for whether it can make a serious dent in the flow of new oil.
Chief executive Tony Hayward tells the BBC he believes the cap is likely to capture "the majority, probably the vast majority" of the oil gushing from the well.
The government's point man on the spill warns that the battle to contain the oil is likely to stretch into the fall.
Millions of gallons of oil have spilled since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers.
Trained noses to sniff out Gulf seafood for oil
Some seafood inspectors working along the Gulf of Mexico are picking up a new skill to keep oil-tainted seafood from consumers.
They're being trained to use their noses to sniff out offending odors.
It's a daunting task to look over all the catch pulled in by thousands of fisherman across the four-state region.
The first line of defense began with closing a third of federal waters and hundreds more square-miles of state waters to fishing.
Now comes the nose, along with conventional lab tests. Federal official Brian Gorman says a trained nose is a highly efficient tool that has been used for centuries making wine, butter and cheese.
Gulf fishermen and seafood buyers say they can't sell a tainted product and it will be impossible for it to reach the market.
