The White House on Friday announced the third departure of a high-level aide to first lady Michelle Obama.

Camille Johnston, Obama's director of communications, "will be leaving the White House for a position in the private sector," an official White House statement said, without saying where she was going.

An official Siemens Corp. statement described Johnston's new position as its vice president, corporate affairs, effective Sept. 7:

"In this position, she will be a member of the U.S. leadership team and will be responsible for developing, leading and implementing a comprehensive and integrated media plan for Siemens Corporation," which it says is moving its U.S. headquaters to D.C. from New York City.

The White House statement included this praise:

" 'Camille has become a trusted advisor to me and to the entire East Wing,' said First Lady Michelle Obama. 'From our first day in the White House when we opened the doors and greeted visitors, she has led a communications team that has developed creative and effective strategies for the Let's Move! campaign, our work on behalf of military families, arts and cultural events in the White House and our international agenda. Her dedication, calming presence and expertise have been invaluable. She will be missed, but we wish her all the best.' "

The White House statement also quotes Johnston:

' 'Being invited by Mrs. Obama to be a part of her East Wing team was a privilege for which I am incredibly grateful. It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve the First Lady and the President and to be a part of this historic Administration.' "

Johnston previously served as communications director to Tipper Gore and was senior vice president of communications for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The earlier East Wing departures included Michelle Obama's first chief of staff, Jackie Norris, who left in June 2009 with little explanation, and her first social secretary, Desiree Rogers, who departed earlier this year after a couple crashed a White House party.

What is Siemens? The Germany-based company describes itself this way: "Siemens Corporation is a U.S. subsidiary of Siemens AG, a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, operating in the industry, energy and healthcare sectors. For more than 160 years, Siemens has built a reputation for leading-edge innovation and the quality of its products, services and solutions. With 405,000 employees in 190 countries, Siemens reported worldwide revenue of $104.3 billion in fiscal 2009."

Despite reports saying that oil is dissipating from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, local officials beg to differ and are pushing for continued commitment to the cleanup effort.

Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, La., believes the cleanup effort is being prematurely scaled back even though oil is still showing up on the coast and the surface of the water.

Photo distributed by Plaquemines Parish

A large mass of oil in Barataria Bay, near Wilkinson Canal, is shown in this photo taken on Thursday. It was released by the Plaquemines Parish government to show that, in contrast to recent reports, there is still plenty of oil on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

"They say they are not (pulling back) but already they have canceled catering contracts, they've stopped production of boom at factories," Nungesser said at a press conference Thursday.

"We know there's a lot of oil out there," Nungesser said. "It's going to continue to come ashore, and we're going to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they're there until all the oil is gone out of the Gulf of Mexico before we pull all of the assets out of our parish."

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's oil spill response chief, said at a separate briefing Thursday that oil has dispersed so much that it’s hard to spot.

"We continue to conduct intensive surveillance in the post storm week looking for oil. As we have talked before it's more dispersed and harder to find."

But Nungesser found that assessment hard to believe.

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"Yesterday there was a flight where no oil was seen. I don't know how they took that flight, but they must have bobbed and weaved around the oil because in Plaquemines Parish there is oil all over," Nungesser said.

His office released photos Thursday of a large stretch of oil in Barataria Bay, near Wilkinson Canal, showing three boats in the vicinity: one skimmer, one running through it, and a third nearby.

"Once again, I’m disappointed that just when I thought we were getting better, there’s no boats out there to pick up this oil that is destined to land in the marsh and destroy more wetlands and more wildlife," said Nungesser. "Where’s the sense of urgency?"

- NBC News Mary Murray and msnbc.com's Petra Cahill

By Mike Brunker, msnbc.com writer and editor

The vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been more traumatic than Hurricane Katrina for coastal residents, with 30 percent of those interviewed apparently suffering mild to serious psychological distress, according to a survey by a health care provider released Thursday.

The survey of 406 Gulf Coast residents, conducted for the nonprofit Ochsner Health System, found that the mental health impacts from the BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill were greatest for residents of Louisiana, the young and the poor.

Eighteen percent of Louisiana residents were suffering “probable serious” or “probable mild-moderate” mental illness based on the K6 psychological distress scale – more than double the rate found in a similar survey conducted in July 2007, two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the state, the survey found. Fourteen percent of Floridians, 12 percent of Mississippians and 10 percent of Alabamans were similarly afflicted, it said.

Hardest hit were residents earning less than $25,000 annually, 32 percent of whom appeared to have “probable serious” mental illness on the K6 scale, it said.

Young respondents (22 to 44 years old) were in the same category, with money and work being the two biggest causes of their stress.

You can read more about the survey by clicking here.

Washington Post reporter Jia Lynn Yang reported Tuesday afternoon that BP plans to seek a tax credit of up to $10 billion from the U.S. government, or about half the amount it pledged to aid victims of the disaster.

The company cites steep losses from the Gulf Coast oil spill.

Yang dug the news out of the company's second-quarter earnings report that said it would record a $32.2 billion charge to reflect the costs of the spill.

"Under U.S. corporate tax law, companies can take credits on up to 35 percent of their losses. For BP, that means a savings on its tax bill of about $10 billion," Yang wrote. "The credit could mean, however, that taxpayers will indirectly foot the bill for the $20 billion fund that BP launched to compensate people and businesses harmed by the disaster."

Read the rest of the Washington Post report here.

By F. Brinley Bruton, msnbc.com staff

LONDON – As BP CEO Tony Hayward resigned under a cloud Tuesday, thousands of British motorists got an unexpected reminder of the oil spill that's wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Mexico.

Protesters with the environmental group Greenpeace said they shut off fuel supplies at 46 BP gas stations across London just in time for the morning rush-hour. Small teams of activists used a standard shut-off switch to stop the flow of fuel oil at the targeted stations. The switches were then removed to prevent most BP outlets in the capital from opening.

Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Demonstrators stand outside a BP petrol station, which they have barricaded with fences, in London on Tuesday.

And to ensure there was no chance of drivers buying gas, demonstrators in fluorescent vests and helmets locked green metal fences around some sites.

"What BP needs to do is not just change CEOs it needs to actually come up with a new strategy," Greenpeace U.K.’s chief executive John Sauven said at one of the shuttered stations in Camden, north London.

Sauven said BP must live up to its pledge to move "beyond petroleum" and stop focusing on squeezing oil from places like the Gulf of Mexico, Canada's tar sands and the fragile Arctic wilderness.

'Holding us to ransom'
Anna Jones, who was one of the handful up at dawn to ensure gas stations were shuttered, took a harder line.

"Big companies like BP are holding us to ransom, chasing profits at the expense of us," the 29-year-old part-time dance teacher said. "The generation before us is largely responsible and the next generation coming up will have to deal with the consequences."

A BP spokesman described the group's protest as "an irresponsible and childish act which is interfering with safety systems." The firm claimed that only a handful of stations had been prevented from opening.

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Londoners had mixed views on Greenpeace's actions.

Daniel Watson, a 41-year-old teacher and tuba player, said BP should recognize the problems of global warming and dependence on petroleum products.

"We are still living in the illusion that we can live on fossil fuels indefinitely," he added. "There is this kind of approach that it is somebody else’s problem."

Golden handshake
Big firms also need to stop handing out big packages to disgraced executives, he said. Hayward's golden handshake included a $1.6 million payoff and pension pot valued at about $17 million.

"We need controls so that doing a bad job doesn’t get rewarded," Watson said.

Steve, who has driven a London cab for 37 years and only gave his first name, said he wanted to do something to "save the whales" but branded the protests targeting gas station as "stunts."

However, Hayward's payout and the behavior of many other executives left the cabbie annoyed.

"Some of cleverest guys can be the stupidest when it comes to the real world – I see that in my job all the time."

But not everyone thought Greenpeace was on the right track.

"Is everybody going to skip driving cars, heating our houses, flying? Get a grip,” said Kathy Wallace, a Canadian who was on her way home to Scotland. “The environment is going to hell anyway, we've already ruined it. All we can do is control the situation."

Oil spill workers toiling along the Gulf Coast have suffered 1,753 illnesses and injuries, according to most recent figures from BP. That’s more than double the tally of a month ago.

Records collected from April 22 through July 15 include 718 illnesses ranging from dehydration and heat exhaustion to seasickness, and 1035 injuries, mostly cuts, bruises and strains caused by accidents. On July 11, for instance, a worker slipped and caught his arm on a fish hook, which was embedded so deeply it reached the bone.

Meanwhile, as of Wednesday, poison control centers had received 863 calls from people in 18 states reporting exposures to oil and dispersants, with symptoms that include headaches, nausea, vomiting and dizziness. People who called from states outside the Gulf Coast region may have been in the area to work or visit or may have family there, said a staffer with the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

Another 536 people have called seeking information about the health effects of the spill, according to the poison centers.

The largest number of reports has come from Louisiana, where health officials have logged 290 health complaints, including 216 from workers and 74 from the general population. Most frequent symptoms include headache, dizziness and nausea.

After nearly 100 days of reporting on the Gulf oil spill, how do you find new angles on what seems like an already well-covered story?

NBC News Chief Environmental Correspondent Anne Thompson explains how she and her crew stay on top of the ongoing environmental disaster by exploring new reporting avenues every day.

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One way is to send NBC News’ Kerry Sanders, who has been covering the Gulf oil spill for the last three months, as close to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico’s as he can get in a submarine.

One vexing question Kerry has had in his reporting is: Can you see the oil down below the surface?

In an effort to answer that question, Kerry and his team of cameramen and engineers have gone to great technical lengths. With the help of a group of scientists, he’s going to try to go about 1,000- 1,800 feet below the surface to look at deepwater coral and try to see if the oil is in the loop current.

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From broadcasting live TV from a ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico to trying to broadcast live from a submarine – Kerry explains the "amazing technical challenges" and the team effort it takes to bring the story home.

By Patrice Fletcher, NBC News Producer

Chicago boasts about 250 theaters and a rich dramatic tradition. But today, the biggest show in town can be found not in a theater, but in a courtroom.

The corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his brother and co-defendant, Robert, has developed a devoted following. Curious spectators have come from all over the city and state to observe this course in "Politics and the Justice System 101."　

Photo by AP Photo/M. Spencer Green

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich shakes hands with a supporter, Art Hamill, Chicago fireman, upon his arrival at the Federal Court building, Tuesday, July 20, 2010, as his wife Patti, right, enters the building.

"This is history being made," said Scott McCoy, former mayor of Pontiac, Ill. "I couldn't miss it."

By 5 a.m. Tuesday, about 50 would-be spectators had lined up outside the Dirksen Federal building in Chicago’s Loop, trying to score one of the 32 courtroom seats available to the public each day or to catch a glimpse of the man himself.

"Good morning, nice to see you. God bless you," Rod Blagojevich said as he entered court Tuesday morning. It’s his daily mantra on the way into and out of the building, as he shakes every hand he can grab.

Both Blagojevich brothers have pleaded not guilty to taking part in a scheme to sell or trade the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama when he was elected in 2008.

In addition, Robert Blagojevich, 54, has pleaded not guilty to a wire fraud charge that he was involved in pressuring two businessmen illegally for campaign funds. And Rod Blagojevich, 53, has pleaded not guilty to plotting to launch a racketeering operation in the governor's office.

The opinions of would-be spectators on their former governor’s case are varied. 　

"This is one exceptional case," said George Calvino, a young African-American man considering law school. "I'm not sure whether Blagojevich will walk or not."

"We totally support him and we think it’s all talk, no action, and a big waste of taxpayer money," said Patty Farley, a middle-aged Chicago woman.

"This guy ran the state into the ground. I think, overall, this will change politics in the state a little bit, wake people up a little bit," said McCoy, the former Pontiac mayor.

Nonetheless, McCoy added, "I'll be happy when this is over…This is an embarrassment for the state."

At least one spectator was there to watch the performance of the prosecutors as much as that of the former governor.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who gained national attention as the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation into the Valerie Plame Affair, spent about 30 minutes in the overflow courtroom, where reporters and the public can hear the audio of the proceedings.

He was listening to one of his deputies cross-examine Robert Blagojevich and taking notes.

Catherine Chomiak, NBC News

-- From the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command Ongoing Response statistics (last updated July 18, 2010)

• More than 6,490 vessels are currently responding on site
• More than 3.4 million feet of containment boom and 7.2 million feet of sorbent boom have been deployed to contain the spill—and approximately 852,000 feet of containment boom and 3 million feet of sorbent boom are available.
• More than 34.2 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.
• Approximately 1.82 million gallons of total dispersant have been applied—1.07 million on the surface and 771,000 sub-sea. Approximately 574,000 gallons are available.
• Approximately 615 miles of Gulf Coast shoreline is currently oiled—approximately 352 miles in Louisiana, 112 miles in Mississippi, 69 miles in Alabama, and 82 miles in Florida.
• Approximately 83,927 square miles of Gulf of Mexico federal waters remain closed to fishing in order to balance economic and public health concerns.

Despite the abundance of information provided by the Deepwater Horizon Response team, as the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico surpasses three months without a permanent solution, public anger against BP continues to overflow online. Web sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr have become active platforms for people to express their frustration with the oil giant and the current environmental crisis.

The "flow rate" of rising anger can be measured online almost as precisely as the gushing oil that incited it on: "Boycott BP." The site, one of more than 500 Facebook pages related to the oil disaster, is dedicated to boycotting "BP stations until the spill is cleaned up," and has 827,164 fans and counting. There are at least 164,000 YouTube videos capturing various protests; more than 36,606 Flickr photos related to the spill; and approximately 78 new tweets per minute continue to keep the oil spill ranking among Twitter's top trending topics.

A search for "BP" on YouTube typically yields clips like one posted by someone going by the name "annebonnylives" of a protest outside a local BP station. "The Raging Grannies," a group of elderly activists, have been staging their singing protests against Halliburton and BP in southern Florida.

Their song "BP's Friggin' Drillin' Rigs," which is sung to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," recommends the two companies "take your friggin' drillin' rigs 'cause we don't want your oil! / Halliburton and BP – you suck!" The video has gone viral, with more than 50,516 views.

Another Floridian, Stan Morton, is "real mad" at BP— so mad, in fact, that he has posted 49 videos, all critical of BP. In one five-minute video, he rants against the company and spills his yard debris in the parking lot of a BP gas station.

There are at least 36,606 photos associated with the Gulf of Mexico disaster on Flickr. User Starflyer2012, posted 88 photos from a May 28th protest at a Manhattan BP station, where hundreds of activists showed up looking as if they were covered in oil.

In addition to posting protest pictures, many people online have doctored BP's green and yellow logo to reflect the leak. Flickr member BWJ, combined BP's logo with Sherwin Williams' to "cover the earth" with black paint. Edited logos, like BWJ's, can even be submitted in a contest sponsored by Greenpeace, who used Flickr to create a "Behind the Logo group." There have been 1,111 entries so far.

To combat the growing body of negative content online, BP's own social media team has ramped up their online presence and is in the process of migrating their DeepwaterHorizonresponse.com site to RestoreTheGulf.gov.

They have set up their own accounts and pages on YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, where BP's Twitter handle BP_America has more than 18,338 followers. The company has also purchased search terms on Google and Yahoo, so their sponsored pages are at the top of the results.

BP's YouTube channel includes a video gallery of clips about the company's oil spill cleanup efforts, the release of clean, oil-free birds and presentations by BP officials about ongoing strategies to contain and clean up the crude.

As of Monday, July 19, the Making it Right commercial has been viewed 319, 482 times.

In Pensacola Beach, Fla., the county Chamber of Commerce and VisitPensacola.com have produced a light-hearted video paid for by BP.

Actors portraying BP clean-up workers are shown enjoying all the attractions in town - from skipping down the beach to going for a bike ride to taking in the nightlife - in an attempt to draw visitors back to the region. Over a montage of Pensacola scenes, text reads, "The cleanup goes on. But the fun never stopped. Pensacola."

Watch the full clip, titled "Clean Up Fun," that Visit Pensacola posted on YouTube.

See Mark Potter's complete report on NBC News' Nightly News that included a clip from the video.

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A critic of Lousiana's attempts to build sand berms as oil spill barriers is saying, "I told you so."

Len Bahr, a former Louisiana State University marine sciences professor, posted images on his blog and sent msnbc.com a few more that he says shows how a new berm off the Chandeleur Islands is being washed away.

"These artificial sand ridges, planned in a science vacuum, will not survive the 2010 hurricane season," he predicted.

Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal had lobbied for, and got, federal permission to try the berms.

Bahr -- who also worked on coastal preservation projects for several state governors, including Jindal -- said the work might be motivated more by profits than science, calling "the aggressive selling of the project suspicious and suggests a hidden motive involving massive dredging contracts."

GRAND ISLE, La. – To hear it from permanent residents of this tiny town at the southernmost edge of the bayou, the community is under siege. Not only did the massive oil spill in the Gulf force an abrupt halt to age-old routines dictated mainly by fishing, but the cleanup up effort has brought an army of workers from "outside."

"It's a drastic change for us, especially in our marinas. It's all workers," said Sheriff Euris DuBois. "The biggest change is we don't know them. They are a different nature."

Photo by Kari Huus/ msnbc.com

Grand Isle Sheriff Euris DuBois in his office on July 12.

Grand Isle has only about 1,500 permanent residents, most born here, said DuBois. They are accustomed to a large influx of families who own the cottages – or "camps" that line the beachfront. But this year, with the beaches off limits and fishing shut down, most of these perennial tourists have stayed away.

Instead there are an estimated 5,000 cleanup workers – from Texas, New Jersey, Alabama and elsewhere. The workers are all male, and the vast majority are black.

That alone is a shock here. The town has only one black permanent resident, said DuBois, and no black tourists that he can recall.

A cool reception
"And they congregate!" a waitress named Jane told diners from out of town as she described the situation, repeating rumors that there was also a rash of theft and violence. "It's bad to where our pastor on Sunday warned the congregation to lock their doors."

Some black workers report they have had a cool reception.

"I don't go out here. I am not welcome," said a worker from Houston who only gave his first name, John. Asked why he felt unwelcome, he said wryly, "uh, just a teeny bit of racism."

A co-worker chimed in: "They gouge us (on rent). They don't want us here," he said. "But we just do the work cleaning up their environment."

Compounding the tension, many companies working down in Grand Isle are renting the beach homes for their workers to stay since all the motels are jam packed. With space scarce, they pay about $100 per night per person right now.

"Some individuals are teed off because they have a group of blacks renting next door," instead of the familiar tourists, said Sheriff DuBois. "But there is no law against that."

Locals want the jobs
In addition, some of the locals are angry because outsiders are getting jobs cleaning up when they have tried and failed to get hired by BP. The beach cleanup crews are mostly under contractors from Texas here, and some of the boats hired to lay boom or help with skimming are from other parts of the Gulf coast.

"We want people from here – Thibodoux, Gretna, Grand Isle [towns in the parish] to get the jobs," said Bradley Hall who came down from Gretna to work but has failed to get a job on the cleanup.

"They don't like any of us," said a captain from New Jersey who is running a boat in the cleanup.

"It's not just blacks. It's Yankees, and everybody who is not from Grand Isle," he said, giving only his first name, Mike.

DuBois dismissed the notion that because of the influx of workers there is also a crime wave.

"Are things missing here more than before? No. No more than normal," he said. "Fighting? Yeah, we get complaints late at night – fights in bars."

But he said that would be going on anyway.

"They just took the place of the tourists," he said.

One spark for the widespread rumors was an actual incident: A few weeks back, outside Cisco's Hideaway on the other side of the island, a worker was stabbed and seriously wounded by another, who has since disappeared. The suspect has been identified and there is an active search ongoing.

Dubois went on the radio to assure people that there was no crime wave in Grand Isle – no one has been raped, he said, to counter that rumor, and the level of theft and petty crime is about normal, he said. And he noted that there are more than 200 security personnel on the 7-mile long strip, including local police, state troopers and many security people hired by BP and the oil spill contractors.

Even so, the government is moving to ease the strains. According to DuBois, the local government is planning to bring in a ship that can sleep 400 workers, in order to move some of the workers out of residential areas.

"If you have a big influx of strangers in a small town, it's natural to have a backlash," he said.

Grand Isle, La.—From a sand levee on this barrier island, about two dozen people lined up facing the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday morning. They held hands, and bowed their heads to pray…

"…for the lives that were lost, the wildlife that is suffering and a way of life in danger."

The ceremony was an effort to look ahead, beyond the current state of crisis and uncertainty.

"We need something positive. There's just too much negativity around this oil spill," said Bobbi Harrison, who organized the prayer session through friends and family here, and through a Facebook page, Cajuns for our Coast. Harrison, who grew up on this seven-mile long strip of sand and graduated from Grand Isle High School, says she is also raising money to buy school supplies for kids in the community whose families are struggling because of the fishing closures, and tough economy.

After a local lay pastor gave a prayer, a PA system brought to the levee on the back of a pick-up truck broadcast a bell chiming 11 times—once each for the men who died in the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in April.

Then the group looked out to the ocean, seemingly past the stretch of beach that is off limits except to clean-up workers, and past booms on the water's edge.

Not only are the beaches off limits, but this normally sedate beach town is crawling with temporary clean-up workers from "outside." About 200 yards up the beach from where they stand is an encampment of workers and the tell-tale white tents of the response operation.

The large influx has put a strain on Grand Isle, according to locals. Every motel room is occupied, and a steady stream of trucks navigate the narrow two lane road through town. And locals say there is now theft in a small town where it was unheard of before.

"It's a catastrophe for our community," said Helen Rockenschuh, who retired here with her husband five years ago. "We are bombarded with extra people right now…The community is not the same."

Photo by Kari Huus/msnbc.com

To end the ceremony, participants stepped forward to cast shells and rocks toward the sea — each with a different wish painted on it.

Some spoke to the bigger issues: "We want our lives back," says a pink shell. "We want fishing back," says a rock. Others, to the little things they longed for: "Walking on the beach," "crabs," and "dogs chasing birds on the shore."

The wishes were launched toward the sea. But with a broad cordoned-off strip of beach between the levee and water, the shells and stones landed silently in the sand.

JEFFERSON PARISH — Sure it's hard to take on powerful oil companies operating in the Gulf, but that wasn't stopping Frazer O'Hara, when he took his anti-petroleum message on the road.

When I came across him on Friday, he was about 30 miles into his journey, cycling south on Interstate 310 heading into the bayou. It was midday, and hot even by local standards — a soupy 90-plus degrees.

On the back of his white shirt in large hand-painted letters, it said, "Bicycles prevent oil spills."

In a roadside chat, with semi-trucks roaring past, a sweat-drenched but cheerful O'Hara explained his mission: "I'm just trying to take over the right hand lane as much as possible with the message that we could prevent this kind of (oil spill) disaster," by putting the brakes on oil consumption. "That it's our choice."

The 29-year-old Loyola University grad said he had set out in the morning from Jefferson parish, next to New Orleans, bound for Grand Isle, a barrier island at the edge of the bayou, a journey of just over 100 miles.

Was it legal to bike down the Interstate? No, he said, but so far the police had not taken an interest. That changed moments later when state trooper Johnny Champagne pulled up on the shoulder.

Photo by Kari Huus/msnbc.com

O'Hara rides south on I-310, on a journey to Grand Isle, La. His shirt reads: "Bikes prevent oil spills."

O'Hara was ready with his rationale, his message about oil, and he quickly pointed out that as a taxpayer he had helped pay for the road.

Champagne noted that indeed, it is not legal to bike on the Interstate, but he didn't press the issue nor pursue philosophical discussion.

"Just making sure everything was okay," he said after assessing the situation. After the trooper left, O'Hara explained that he was also working with a non-profit called Team Gulf, an Internet-connected activist group that turned its focus to helping in the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon accident.

Corporate interests are powerful and daunting, said O'Hara, so people needed to band together to be influential.

"The only thing we can do is amass the strength we have in numbers." For the day, though, he was a one-man demonstration, with many hours on the road ahead to get his message out.

And, finally, a footnote for those of you who wondered about the wisdom of conducting sensitive sniff tests within breathing distance of a waste treatment plant.

When I asked NOAA’s Steven Wilson whether the, shall we say pungent, odor from the plant might not interfere with the experts’ razor sharp sense of smell, he said that wasn’t a concern.

“Believe it or not, our assessors can filter that out,” he said.

By JoNel Aleccia and Kari Huus, msnbc.com

A final word about the "top guns" of seafood sniffing.

Known as expert assessors, there are only 18 of them on NOAA's payroll. These are the experts who are capable of smelling 1 part per million of contaminants, according to Steven Wilson, the chief quality officer of NOAA's Seafood Inspection Service.

To prepare them for their duty in the Gulf, NOAA sent them to Gloucester, Mass., for "harmonizing" – a process in which they repeatedly sniffed samples from the BP oil smell until they could agree on common descriptors for the odor of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon.

As noted in this previous post, Wilson is hoping to build the expert squad up to 24 to help handle the crush of work in the coming months.

In addition, NOAA recently held three three-day sessions for state screeners. These were people who already were working as fish inspectors or lab personnel and had some training in the sensory arts. With the refresher training, Wilson said, they will be able to detect 10 parts per million of contaminants and help prevent the expert sniffers from being overwhelmed.

That will leave the agency's finest-tuned noses to concentrate on the most delicate decisions that lie ahead: When areas will be reopened for fishing.

That's why, though Wilson was willing to appear on camera, he steadfastly refused to identify the expert assessors and said he would strongly resist any efforts to force disclosure.

"We're in the middle of an industry under stress," he said, referring to the hard-hit Gulf commercial fishing industry. "These assessors stay here for two weeks at a time. We don't want any kind of pressure on them to make some kind of determination."

He said many of the assessors have expressed concerns about possible repercussions, adding, "I would push hard to support their fears and their concerns in this issue."

Click here for the final post in the series: Tuning out is just as important as sniffing

From the lab where the fish was dissected, we were ushered into a similar looking testing room, where three lidded Pyrex bows sat on the counter – one with red snapper, one with shrimp and one with oysters.

Steven Wilson, chief of quality control for the Seafood Inspection Program, demonstrated the techniques that a sensor would use.

But first he noted a deviation from NOAA's strict testing protocol: Seafood sensors usually work behind white cardboard partitions to ensure they don't pick up any visual cues from other sniffers. He also added another restriction that wasn't mentioned in this earlier post on testing procedures: Sensors don't wear rings while sniffing lest they pick up the slightest whiff of metal.

Then he pried the lid on the first bowl up about 2 inches, and used his other hand to waft a bit of air toward his nose, almost like a wine taster sampling a fine Cabernet Sauvignon. He then replaced the lid and stepped back.

He wasn't rocked back on his heels by the odor. Wilson explained that at this point in the process, the sensor is supposed to apply a single descriptor to the smell, maybe something like "smells like rubber bands."

Such a smell would likely earn the fishery where that sample was caught a "remain closed" rating from an expert assessor, but if 70 percent of the sensory panel decided it was OK, it would be cooked and then submitted to a second smell test, Wilson explained. Then, if it again was approved by 70 percent of the panel, they would taste it.

If 70 percent gave a thumbs up, the sample would be tested for 14 toxic chemicals at the Seattle lab, after which the fishery would be cleared for reopening if the results were negative.

One interesting footnote: Like wine tasters, seafood sniffers need to clear their senses between samples. The NOAA experts use watermelon and cucumbers to clear their nasal passages and eat saltine crackers between tastings.

Be back shortly with a bit more on the real hotdogs of the seafood sensory world.

Click here for the next post in the series: The 'top guns' of seafood sniffing

Sensory testing -- or sniffing -- is done under tightly controlled conditions. Tests are conducted in rooms with waterproof, seamless floors and smooth walls painted white, light gray or beige. The temperature must be between 68 degrees and 75 degrees with relative humidity at 45 percent. They can't be distracted by any other personnel, including fish industry officials – or reporters, said Steven Wilson, who oversees the inspections for NOAA.

The testers themselves must wash their hands with odorless soap and dry them with low-odor, white paper towels. They can't wear cologne or perfume -- although deodorant is OK, Wilson said -- and they must avoid eating spicy foods the day before and the day of the test, according to an industry manual.

A minimum of six 1-pound samples of seafood are collected. The testers smell each of the raw samples and record the odor, marking its intensity on a zero-to-4-point scale, with 4 being the most aromatic. They also note any unusual characteristics. An oil-tainted fish might smell "piney," for instance, with an aroma like Pine Sol cleaner, or it might smell "phenolic," with an aroma of Band-Aids.

The samples are then cooked and testers evaluate the cooked aroma and also take a tiny taste. They must spit out the samples, the manual says.

Now, let's see the process in action.

Click here for the next post in the series: A fine red snapper, with a hint of rubber bands

In case you were wondering, there are between 60 and 70 people in the U.S. trained as expert seafood sensory assessors.

They work for NOAA or the federal Food and Drug Administration and are usually charged with inspecting seafood shipments for signs of decomposition.

A person becomes an expert through a combination of natural ability, training and practice, said Steven Wilson, chief quality officer for NOAA's Seafood Inspection Program. The best testers can detect taint in concentrations as low as 1 part per million, he said.

"The issues that come up are just, literally, how sensitive their noses can be," he said. "Also, how repeatable their results are."

About 16 of those experts specialize in petroleum taint, said Wilson, with more experts being trained in this specialty every day. By the end of the summer, Wilson hopes to have at least 24 assessors "harmonized," a process that trains testers to detect oil and dispersants specific to the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Click here to read the next post in the series: Two filets: One for sniffing, one for the lab

By JoNel Aleccia, msnbc.com health reporter

While we're waiting for the sniffing to begin, let's address a question that several posters already have brought up:

Why use humans rather than chemical tests?

Using human assessors rather than chemical tests for first screening is a matter of efficiency and practicality, according to Steven Wilson, chief quality officer for NOAA's inspection program. Seafood that has a noticeably oily smell or taste is considered unfit for human consumption and can't be sold.

"If you actually smell oil in there, even though the chemical may be low and safe to eat, it won't be marketable," he said. "There are times when even it fails sensory, it passes chemical."

And suspect samples are chemically tested for PAHs – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, the primary components of oil and tar. But that process is expensive and time-consuming. It can cost between $400 and $800 and take four days to test a batch of fish. Better to test only the fish that seem, well, fishy, Wilson said.

Click here to read the next post in the series: Deep sea fish on the sniffing menu