what it looks like. it is all over this side of the chandeleur islands. this kind of orange almost goo. captain george is good enough to drive us out here and we just came upon this. when you see this, what do you think? it s a little discouraging now. right now we re at a very popular fishing location and we re in it so it s on this side of the island right now and we re going to keep on going south. reporter: as you take a look at some of the oil in the water we noticed it s at least 18 inches deep. i ve seen some fish already swimming through it. so to get a better glimpse is to what it really looks like under there, let s take a look with our underwater camera. and one of the biggest concerns here with this oil spill, of course, is the wildlife and now we have a front row seat to what these experts are talking about. this is new harbor island. there are hundreds of pelicans
being deployed by helicopter, by boat and land, to evaluate reports of oil and act as dictated by the response plans. we also remain ready to respond to any wild life that might have been impacted. so far, we had two oil birds cleans and they will be repeated. we received word friday of two dead birds and three dead porpoises off louisiana. we are working to identify whether the deaths are a result of this spill. in st. petersburg, florida, our command post is up and running. i would like to clarify some reports. grand isle, louisiana department of environmental quality personnel confirmed that the red fluffy material in those areas is in algae, not oil. we had oil reported in the vicinity of the chandeleur islands and crews are working in that area to make sure they can skim or remove that oil.
we have oil around chandeleur island and our cleanup team is responding to that. in certain areas, what was originally reported as oil has been confirmed to be algae. offshore we did complete five successful burns yesterday. we actually skimmed over 17,500 barrels of an oily water mix. i would end by saying we are focused on stopping the floeshgs minimum migz the impacts environmental and economic, and about keeping the public informed of our activities. thank you. at this point we ll open up for questions. ray henry, associated prechlts condition you explain a little about the hydrate situation? what exactly happened last night and what the status of the dome is now? where do you go from here? yes. what we did last night was, we
to the chandeleur islands, he is a charter boat captain for sports fishermen. he s already lost $21,000 in one week of work. quick final note. we have taken a bit of our oil to a test facility. water testing facility so hopefully at some point today we ll have an idea as to the concentration if in fact, this is oil, the concentration of petroleum and the effects it may have on the wildfire. incredible to hear how people are starting to be affected by what s happening. brooke, we appreciate you and we ll check in with you again this morning. thanks so much. as we ve been saying this type of deep sea operation has never been tried before. they ve done it before but not at these depths. 5,000 feet down so what happens if this doesn t work? cnn s david mattingly caught up with the bp ceo just to ask what s the backup plan. reporter: you ve got that containment dome on its way down to the bottom of the gulf of mexico. how confident are you that this is going to work? this has never be
that with basically rubber cuttings, and they re just going to shoot rubber cuttings into the leak and try to clog it. that s one option. the second option is to put a new blowout preventer on top of the old blowout preventer that has not worked and activate the new one to stop the leak. so, they are continuing to look at options because the best option, the one they are most confident about, is drilling a relief well, that activity continues. however, it takes two to three months, and already look at the pictures we re seeing in the gulf. the waters are truly foul. we were out there yesterday near the chandeleur islands which are part of the breton national wildlife refuge, and you could smell the oil. and on that wildlife refuge are many different species of birds, some endangered, others threatened, so the risks here are great and another two to three months of this spilling into the gulf is what no one wants. yeah. absolutely.