spread. even though the absolute amount of oil now seems to be less than originally feared, make no mistake, this is still a mess. the fish and sandpipers are still feeding out here. you can t smell it, but it s nauseating. i can t imagine having to feed from the land and the sea. authorities are telling beachgoers not to touch the tar balls. they are not safe. this is toxic chemicals that you are handling. they are saying to report those. now there s a small army that s working on this cleanup. 1,300 people working on the response up and down the southern california coastline. offshore, they have recovered 5,500 gallons of oil.
california. that s a good thing to take off on here. there s hope as to whether or not we can figure out what happened. looks like a beautiful day. how is the beach behind you? it s interesting. when you first get out here and first blush, it looks like a typical southern california day. the thing everybody comes here for. then you look closer. the beach is open but no one is in the water. that s because they are not allowing people in the water. there s a cleanup crew. you can see over my shoulder, there s container ships that are the focus of some of the investigation. i can count just seven right here offshore in huntington beach. there are probably a couple dozen more that are waiting to get into the port of los angeles and long beach. they re starting to get a handle on this, but then you look how far this spreads. 75 miles down the coast from me in san diego, they are cleaning up tar balls. they are working on this cleanup there as well as the oil spill
they think it would have happened during that time. we will hear some of the details that the coast guard officials revealed yesterday. as we develop targets of interest, vessels that may have done this, likely going to be a foreign vessel and what you will probably see moving forward and we anticipate is we board the vessels as we can and over time, it could be in the port of the nation. we will be ready to do that. that is something that will take time. reporter: you can imagine the number of ships they have to look into in order to continue the investigation. meanwhile, we now know that as much as 131,000 gallons of oil may have leaked into the ocean. most of which in the water. clean-up crews are still monitoring the beaches here in orange county and as far as san diego county. these are beaches that are always full of people, visitors and locals. crews are monitoring and looking for tar balls and affected
whiff of oil came through that door. reporter: today oil slicked animals are slowly being rescued, but it could be weeks, even months before the impact to wildlife is known. you have to pour all resources in to making sure that we mitigate the damage. reporter: with 25 miles of southern california s iconic coastline closed to fishing, today tar balls washed along shore in huntington and newport beaches. it is believed the leak occurred in a pipeline connecting the drill platform to the shore. divers are looking for the source of the rupture, about four miles off coast under more than 80 feet of water. with booms deployed to capture oil, beta offshore which runs the platform modelled the worst case scenario spill back in 2012 it mirrored a similar disaster to the very one unfolding today, highlighting the danger of offshore drilling. there are about 23 platforms
potentially even decades. reporter: water quality scientists are sick and tired of excuses for oil spills. these spills have occurred for as long as oil extraction has happened. and despite advances in technology, despite new regulations, this industry continues to skirt those regulations, ignore regulations and continues to pollute. reporter: the suffering from the oil spill crippling birds. their feathers gummed up with the tar-like toxic crude oil. it may be weeks before we know the impact on other animals whose habitat has been contaminated. as for people, they are still using the beaches but noticing tar balls and ribbons of dark, sticky muck. they are trying to clean it up, but there s a lot of work to do. and we still don t know the extent of exactly just how much oil has been spilled. but the damage is done. not just to wildlife but the tourism business. out on the water. any kind of oil that you see,