environmental and economic disaster. and this is a critical time. one mile beneath my feet, testing is under way that could lead to capping the well. these images of the oil spewing into the gulf may soon be just a bad memory. but you wouldn't know it by what you see on the surface. just some quick observations of what we see out here, it looks like a small city of vessels, about 10 or 20 large ships out there, two of them clearly producing oil, pumping it up from below. that's where we see the large flames erupting as they burn off the natural gas that comes up. i asked our coast guard escort to go in for a closer look. i wanted to see if there was anything going on that might show this catastrophe is turning a corner. but this was as close as we could go. we're about a mile away right now. why can't we get any closer? >> right now safety is paramount. today is a very essential day in the operation. there is a lot of moving parts today. just for the safety of the operation we need to stay about a mile back. >> reporter: these operations