chandeleur islands. is there any sign of this environmental, wildlife catastrophe that we have been expect sng. most of the problem is like sweeping it under the rug. the dispersements have been put under the water are doing the oil itself is now floating. the oil that is under the water is doing damage where we can t see it. some is come ago shore. a lot of it is under the gulf of mexico. this big mass of oil and dispersements is now moving around in different directions. we are not certain where it is headed. it may be headed into the loop channel and on to the gulfstream. we don t know. clearly, there is an enormous amount of pollution under the water. that pollution has enormous impact on the fish, the reproducing fish, on the shell
millions of them. i ll grab a towel now. this stuff is rubbing up against the side of the boat. there it is. that s what s in the water. that s sticking to the side of the boat right there. if this is doing this to the boat, what is it going to do to anything that lives in this water? it s going to be very, very hard on the fish and shell fish. and the oil seems to go on forever. over here, as far as the eye can see there is, like, a red line of that oil going right across the gulf of mexico. it is endless. reporter: and as bad as it looked it was about to get worse. this is something we didn t expect to see. this is a sea turtle. it s right here in the water. it s right near the top. it s swimming right in the middle of all of that oily mess right there. and he s having trouble. that s why he s doing that. he should not be doing that. reporter: the turtle has to come up for air. the turtle s coming up for air and what it does, it s
reporter: all the way down. i m going to grab a towel here. this is rubbing up against the side of the boat. there it is. that s what s in the water, sticking to the side of the boat right there. if this is doing this to the boat, what is it going to do to anything that lives in the water? hard on the fish and shell fish. reporter: the oil seems to go on forever. over here, as far as the eye can see, there s a red line of that oil going right across the gulf of mexico. it is endless. as bad as it looked, it was about to get worse. this was something we didn t expect to see. this is a sea turtle, right here in the water, right near the top, swimming right in the middle of that oily mess. he s having trouble, that s why he s doing that. reporter: clearly stressed. the turtle has to come up for
of dispersed oil that settled on the bottom. the big thing is, who s going to want to eat that? how are they going to sell their catch? seems like just driving down here, coming down route 23 and seeing the industry and seeing the businesses and seeing the you know, what s painted on people s trucks in terms of where they work, it sort of feels like the oil industry giveth and the oil industry taketh away. i mean, obviously it s the spine of the economy here, it s the fishing and oil industry. even literally, the oil rigs providing a habitat for the fish that you catch as a charter boat captain. but then there s this risk. what do you feel like is the balance in terms of the good and bad of the oil industry down here? i mean, what s the future for louisiana down here with oil? this was human error that caused this. it could have been avoided. the risk shouldn t have been as high as it is, due to the fact
long-term impact on this region. is there a telltale sign when you re trying to assess things like this, is there a telltale sign you look for in terms of the impact to the impact? on saturday we flew over the area. the water is not healthy. you can see there s not a shine the way it normally would have. the scale of this thing is so large. it s hard to describe. that oil sitting on the oil is mixing in the water column, will be taken up by the fish, the shell fish. oysters, for example, take up oil 1,000 times of what s in the water column. so if there s one part per million in the water column, they ll have 1,000 parts per million in the oyster. these systems are like vacuum sweepers. they hold it in their tissues and biomagnify it up the food chain. do you think it s possible to clean a spill like this, a flow like this. we talked about accountability.