In the first piece of good news on the oil spill disaster in several weeks, the Coast Guard announced Wednesday that BP has managed to cap one of the three leaks at the deepwater oil well. 

But the news came with a caveat. "It doesn't lessen the flow, it just simplifies the number of leak points they have to address," Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class David Mosley said.

As the crisis continues, see images on Flickr of crude oil floating on the surface of the Gulf waters and what your hand looks like after touching it posted by Jeremy Symons, National Wildlife Federation Senior Vice President. 

Google Crisis Response has a series of images showing the Gulf Oil Spill layers. From the "current spill extent" and a map of closed fishing areas to satellite images of the spill - the layering graphic demonstrates the extent of the crisis.

The Times-Picayune also has an animated graphic of how the oil spill has moved based on "overflight information and forecast models from the NOAA and Unified Command."

And click below to see msnbc.com's slideshow of the ongoing oil spill recovery efforts. 

SLIDESHOW: Oil spill disaster and recovery efforts

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NBC News' Mike Taibbi reports on one Louisiana business, run by the same family for three generations, that may be destroyed by the oil spill disaster.

"We're dead. It's over with for us," said Capt. Louis Skrmetta, about his family's boat excursion business that has taken tourists out to Ship Island, where there is a Civil War area fort and the remains of a prohibation era speakeasy his grandfather ran, for decades. Click on the video link below to hear Skrmetta's story.

VIDEO: Gulf oil spill threatens long-time family business

Posted by Alex Johnson, msnbc.com

The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico could put a big squeeze on Florida's lucrative tourism industry, state officials are warning.

More than 11,000 people have visited the state's tourism website since Sunday, Mike Vasilinda of NBC station WPTV of West Palm Beach reports, and the state's oil spill disaster hotline was taking a call every three minutes. Mainly, said Holly Jane Aldridge, a volunteer with the hotline, callers are "concerned about their vacation plans."

For now, officials say they can only tell Web visitors and callers that they don't know yet what impact the spill will have on their vacation plans. But they said some fishing charter operations were reporting drops in bookings as much as 40 percent — potentially a severe blow to Florida's economy, which relies on tourism for $60 billion a year, they said.

Click to read the full report from WPTV.

How do you clean an oil-covered bird anyway?

The Audubon Magazine's Alisa Opar interviewed Jay Holcolmb, the International Bird Rescue Research Center's executive director, to find out.

No! Oiled birds often suffer from hypo or hyperthermia. Many haven't eaten in days and are often dehydrated and exhausted by the time we capture them. They must be stabilized before attempting cleaning. Stabilized birds have a much higher survival rate than birds that are not stabilized prior to being washed. A bird can safely be held as much as 5 days before being cleaned....

We use "Dawn" dish washing liquid. IBRRC has conducted research on most of the commonly available cleaning agents and "Dawn" meets all the criteria we have established for appropriate cleaning agents. Those criteria are the ability to remove most oils, effectiveness at low concentrations, non-irritating to the skin and eyes, rapid removal from feathers (rinsing), and is easily accessible. Procter and Gamble now donates all "Dawn" detergent to IBRRC and other rehabilitation organizations.

Click here to read the complete story: "FAQ: How Oil-Covered Birds Are Cleaned"

ON THE BAYOU WEST OF PORT SULPHUR, La. -- It's the last day of shrimping season on this side of the Mississippi River, and that's bad news for the Bien Nguyen and Hua Van Thi, who are out on their trawler Sea King trying to make the best of it.

By noon Tuesday, the husband-wife team has caught just a few hundred shrimp -- far fewer than necessary to cover fuel – and they are bundling up the nets to head back to port.

"I'm scared," says Hua, who notes that she already is struggling to make house and car payments. "All the people are scared."

 
Jim Seida / msnbc.com
Bien Nguyen and his wife Hua Van Thi empty their nets onto the deck of Sea King in the bayou west of Port Sulphur, La., on Tuesday.

The problem is that the brown shrimp they are after are not yet mature, so they slip right through the net. In normal times, the shrimpers here would just be getting their trawlers ready for long, lucrative days out in the bayou pulling in shrimp during a season that usually lasts about 55 days, running until mid-July.

But, with oil gushing from a broken well off the coast – and potentially polluting this area in coming days -- the state opened the season early, in late April, before shutting it at 6 p.m. on Tuesday.

"The premise was to give the fishermen an opportunity to get to work and earn income and feed their families," says Martin Bourgious, marine biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

But because of the early start to the season, the catch has been meager.

"It's the white shrimp everyone is looking for," says Ray Jacomine, a commercial shrimper in the Gulf for five decades.

In the best years of his career, there were days when he and his crew brought in $10,000 to $20,000 worth of shrimp in a day on the large boats he runs. But today, Jacomine is out in a small recreational boat with his friend, Alan William, who is retired from the local power company.

Jacomine says all the commercial boats have all gone back to port, because there's nothing to catch right now. They're not finding the mature white shrimp, and most of the brown shrimp are still too small.

"It's not economical," he says, explaining that it costs $400 an hour in fuel to run big trawlers.

And this old salt believes that if the wind and water conditions continue as they are, the oil is heading directly for his long-time fishing grounds. "It does not look good," he says.

Jim Seida / msnbc.com
Alan William holds three shrimp, all too small to keep, aboard his small boat west of Port Sulphur, La., on Tuesday. The small fish in the background are gulf menhaden, which also were to be thrown back.

After 20 minutes Jacomine and William pull their nets out of the water. Hundreds of tiny silver fish – gulf menhaden, which they will throw back -- pour out onto the deck, along with a few dozen brown shrimp, each smaller than a pinkie finger. Total number of mature shrimp in this load: One.

"Look," William says. "One shrimp!"

"We'll have to cut into pieces," quips his fishing buddy.

Fortunately, these two are not depending on this catch for their dinner.

Enroute to HOPEDALE, La. – The weather has finally cleared in southeastern Louisiana – meaning the recovery workers, the Coast Guard, the private contractors and BP can all get out on the water more easily now.

The sun is shining and the winds have come way down. The oil is staying off-shore and with the calmer winds, the seas are diminishing – so the boats can get out and start skimming again, to continue laying the boom out and stop the oil more easily than they could before.

VIDEO: Joining forces to save the bayou

The slick is still sitting off-shore and has not made a major landfall. Weather forecasters are saying that it is going to be out there for a little while now before threatening shore.

All of that has combined to give the recovery workers a chance to catch up. Mother Nature is finally cooperating. The recovery workers had lost valuable time over the weekend because of fierce weather – now they have a chance to catch up.

Right now, I am heading to Hopedale, La., which is in St. Bernard's Parish. Fishermen there are working with BP to lay out boom and protective barriers against the oil.

Some of them are working on their own, others directly with BP – but they all say they are doing this to protect their own waters.

They have a vested interest in their own success. They want to stop the oil from coming in and ruining the oyster beds – their industry. It's how they make their livelihood. The oysters live on the bottom of the sea bed, they ingest water as part of their feeding system, but if it has oil in it – it will kill them and ruin their cash crop for years to come.

So they are very dedicated to getting out there and using this time now to stop that oil and fouling their harvest. People say they are working on the recovery effort for their state, their parish, their industry and their own livelihoods.

They are out there at the crack of dawn putting out these booms and barriers – trying to slow the spread of the oil.

BP is there of course, coordinating the efforts – but the local fishermen have done some of this on their own as well. This is as much a St. Bernard Parish effort as it is a BP effort.

DELACROIX, La. – A lily white egret hovers at the water's edge and then settles on its long legs in the towering marsh grass. So far, the oil has not penetrated this maze of waterways. There are no oil-soaked birds – at least not yet.

In Bayou Terre Aux Boeufs – Bayou of Buffalos – at Louisiana's outer edge, Monday is one of the first clear, calm days since an oil rig exploded off the coast, unleashing an underwater gusher that is spewing thousands of gallons of sweet crude into the water every day. 

In this tiny fishing community at the end of the road, several dozen homes and trailers lifted up on stilts overlook the marsh. The skeletal remains of boat houses and homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 still stand amid what was rebuilt, storm detritus still hanging on the frames.  A few locals huddle on a dock by their boats, watching the wind, the tides, the wave action, wondering whether the oil will destroy what remains of this pristine habitat — and their way of life.

"Every inch of this habitat has something living on it," says environmentalist John Lopez, who is acting as tour guide today. This marsh not only supports dozens of endangered species, says Lopez, director of sustainability at the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring and preserving the water quality, coast, and habitats of the salt water estuary. It is a nursery for the Gulf.

"Sixty to 70 percent of the commercial (fish) species in the Gulf depend on the Louisiana wetlands," he says.

Even if this area dodges the immediate threat of an oil invasion, the marsh is in a precipitous decline, and the oil industry is one of the key reasons, according to Lopez. Oil companies have carved canals through the marsh over the decades to make way for drilling rigs and pipelines, splintering a cohesive ecosystem, he says. That has changed the flow of water, the types of plants that can survive and the ability of the area to protect the mainland from hurricanes.

From 1932 to the present, the Louisiana wetland has lost about half of its total area – a football field of area every 45 minutes on average. The oil industry is believed to have caused 30 to 40 percent of the total loss of marshland, according to Lopez. "It's hard to quantify, but we know (the oil industry) had a big impact," he says.

Projects to control the Mississippi River and hurricanes have also contributed to the loss of wetlands, he says.

Now, the residents of Bayou Terre Aux Boeufs watch and wait to see whether this oil in the Gulf will finish the job that the pursuit of oil has accelerated.

Click below to watch New Orleans carriage driver Max Boos explain his worry that a loss of seafood caused by the oil slick could drive away tourists - which would hurt his wallet.

The 60-year-old Boos is a New Orleans native and he only began driving a buggy last year, to make extra money to pay off his "Katrina debt." It's a steady flow of tourists, like his passengers Ben Copeland and Cheryl Jackson, visiting from Bowie, Md., that Boos and his fellow drivers need to stay profitable.

By Cynthia Joyce, msnbc.com

Chef Mark DeFelice of Pascal's Manale restaurant in uptown New Orleans has all the oysters and shrimp he needs through Tuesday, but he's exploring all his options to ensure that the fourth-generation family-owned eatery has an uninterrupted supply of seafood after that.

David Friedman / msnbc.com Mark DeFelice, executive chef at Pascal's Manale restaurant in New Orleans, greets a lunch customer on Monday.

On the Monday afternoon following the rollicking weekend Jazz Fest, an obviously tired DeFelice was decompressing at the bar before lunch service went into full swing, greeting a steady stream of regular patrons, nearly all of them by name.

"We just had the best Jazz Fest since Katrina," he said, simultaneously holding out his hand to two women on their way into the dining room. "We opened more oysters this weekend than since I can remember when."

But watching a local news broadcast showed a giant cartoonish blob illustrating the spread of the oil spill toward the coast, DeFelice was visibly concerned.

"We don't know what the availability of oysters is going to be, but now it's gonna be a question of who gets them," he said. "I'm on the phone every day with my suppliers, and we're guaranteed oysters through Tuesday. After that I'm hoping to get them from the West side."

On Sunday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration closed about 6,800 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico -- extending from Mississippi River to Pensacola Bay Louisiana to Florida – to commercial and recreational fishing. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals also shut six oyster harvesting areas along the eastern coast of Louisiana due to the possible health threat posed by the spreading oil slick.

David Friedman / msnbc.com DeFelice lines up oysters harvested from the Louisiana coast before the spreading oil slick forced authorities to close the area.

DeFelice, who normally gets his oysters from farms on the east side of the Mississippi, doesn't yet know how the oysters from the western side will taste.

"Those oysters are just waiting for the water to come through. Whatever's in that water, that's what they are. Either salty, or fresh -- whatever's in that water, that's what they are."

When demand for Louisiana oysters has outstripped the supply, DeFelice occasionally has bought "foreign" oysters -- from Galveston Bay in Texas or from Appalachicola in Florida.

But he draws the line when it comes to to going outside the Gulf Coast to obtain the delicate shellfish.

"Never the Chesapeake," he said. Asked about Pacific Northwest, he responded as though he'd never heard of the place. "Northwest? No. Never."

"I guess that we're lucky in that we can poke at different resources -- at least we have some different avenues to take," DeFelice said, pointing to Georgia and South Carolina as alternate sources of shrimp if need be. "But we're working hard to keep it local."

From Mark Murray, NBC News

 

In what is the first political TV advertisement to highlight the oil spill in the Gulf Coast region -- and apparently the first explicit politicization of the accident -- MoveOn.org is urging President Obama to reinstate the ban on offshore drilling.

 

The ad features dramatic images from the spill as a narrator asks of the president: "Will you lead our country into a clean energy future?  Or will we see more of this?"

 

A spokesman says the ad will run on national cable, starting later this week.

 

To see the ad, click here: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/05/03/2292653.aspx

David Friedman / msnbc.com Friends gather at the home of Justin Lundgren and Kiersta Kurtz-Burke in New Orleans on Sunday to watch an episode of the HBO series "Treme," which chronicles the city after Hurricane Katrina. 

On the Evite that my friends Justin Lundgren and Kiersta Kurtz-Burke sent out to 50 of their friends and neighbors, they listed their address as "Our house – the unsinkable Crescent City, LA, US."  

Their Mid-City house was nearly sunk by Hurricane Katrina almost five years ago, but even before they were allowed back in the city to assess the damage, they'd resolved to rebuild. "Now," Justin said of the oil spill, "this really does seem like it could be the final straw. But I'm trying not to be pessimistic."

"Maybe the world really will end in 2012," a friend nearby offered – almost hopefully, in a way that only someone who's been through too much already could spin it. Justin introduced her as a pescetarian, although she preferred the term "vegaquarium." "So she's really going to suffer," he added with genuine sympathy.

While that same sort of hoping-for-the-best-but-expecting-the-worst vibe dominated most discussions around the oil spill, watching the show "Treme" with a group of people seeing the most intense chapter of their lives dramatized was a decidedly upbeat event – one that lent new meaning to the term "high definition."  

During a scene where Albert Lambreaux, the Mardi Gras Indian Chief, asked a bureaucrat, "Man, how do you sleep at night?" the man's quick reply, "I drink," was met by a shout from the back row: "We all do, brother!"

When John Boutte, the singer of the "Treme" theme song, appeared on stage in his first cameo of the series, the room applauded. Many got up and danced along during the Mardi Gras Indian songs. And when a YouTube video showed George Bush promising not to abandon New Orleans, obscene hand gestures were flipped at the television screen. As the credits rolled, everyone clapped along, and no one was in a rush to bring the lights back on.

Conversations moved on to memorable Jazz Fest meals and performances and invariably circled back to the oil spill and just how big a threat it could prove to be.

Ian McNulty, a New Orleans food writer, said he thought some of the worst-case scenarios regarding Louisiana's threatened seafood industry were overstated. "Not to downplay this at all – and not that this isn't horrific – but this isn't the end of the Louisiana seafood industry," he said. "There's a whole other stretch of coast west of this thing that hasn't been affected yet."

Justin summed up how he compared the two disasters, "With Hurricane Katrina, that was more of a physical assault," he said. "This is more like … a cancer."

EMPIRE, La. -- Eighty-three-year-old Lawrence Stipelcovich hasn't missed a shrimping season for seventy years. The approaching oil, however, has him concerned about the next generation of fishermen.

Video: Tough old fisherman

Jim Seida / msnbc.com

As BP prepares to drill a relief well to try to staunch the flow of oil from the damaged Deepwater Horizon rigging, the New York Times compares the challenges to those faced last year when relief wells were used to cap a leaking well off Australia.

GULFPORT, Miss. - Deep-fried mullet and maybe a side of grits and butter are on the menu for Charles Osbon tonight in Gulfport. He likes to call them "Biloxi bacon" and his wife Linda really looks forward to the grits.

David Friedman / msnbc.com
Thomas Ladner, left, and Charles Osbon fish for mullet with a cast net off the West Side Pier in Gulfport, Miss., on Sunday, May 2.

Today's catch, about 25 to 30 fish caught amid passing rain showers, won't last past tonight's meal. Between casts of the large net weighted with metal chain links, Osbon says he fears future mullet fishing may be compromised: "I'll tell you what, that oil comes in here, there won't be none."

How long has Osbon been fishing here? The 65-year-old Gulfport native learned how to pull a cast net from his grandfather when he was nine.  Last season he fished from the pier almost every other day, only stopping because of this year's exceptionally cold winter.

David Friedman / msnbc.com
Thomas Ladner pulls a freshly caught mullet from the cast net manned by Charles Osbon on the West Side Pier in Gulfport, Miss., on Sunday, May 2.

Thomas Ladner, Osbon's fishing partner on the West Side Pier in Gulfport, worries if the oil slick reaches shore here, it could kill the fishing for many years. "It'll hurt lots of us," he says. If the oil comes, he'll cast for dinner elsewhere. Ladner has a boat that he'll take upriver. "I'll find me a way to fish," he says, "but we just hope it don't come."

Empire, LA - It's easy to see the value placed upon friends and family when you stop by Mike Ballay's Port Sulfur home for a crawfish feast. "If you're not from here, you wouldn't understand," he says, expertly separating the crawfish's head from its tail, eating the meat out of the tail and then sucking the head, "the rest of the nation doesn't have a clue how we live."

They live large. Ballay and some friends and family, all from the lower end of Plaquemines Parish, are gathered around a plastic table heaped with crawfish, corn on the cob, onions, potatoes, garlic and sausage. Enjoying the warm, humid night air and some cold beers, they talk about the threat of 200,000 gallons of oil a day pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, just fifteen miles away.

Jim Seida / msnbc.com
Dustin Burns (left), Kristen Ballay and Timmy Arceneaux dig into crawfish and cold beers at Kristen's father's house just off Highway 23 in Empire, La., on Saturday, May 1.

"Everybody's scared," says Ballay, who works as a harbormaster at the Cyprus Cove Marina in Venice, 25 miles to the south. "They don't know what to do."  The owner of the marina invested $3 million into the facility and Ballay says that this was going to be their "breakout year." That was before the oil.

It likely won't send the residents of Plaquemine Parish running for higher ground, though. They have a reputation for staying put, or at least for coming back.  Ballay was born here 59 years ago and his home, on eight-foot stilts, sits exactly where his previous home stood before Katrina wiped it off the map.  "What am I gonna do?" he asks. "Go live somewhere (else) and be a stranger somewhere?"

Jim Seida / msnbc.com
"The rest of the nation doesn't have a clue how we live," says Mike Ballay with friend Beverly Peterson at Bally's Empire, La., home on Saturday, May 1.

Ballay's seen a lot of changes in the area in those 59 years. "For us to see the way the marsh was and to see it disappear … it used to be full of bays and bayous, it was full of oak trees."
Now, he says, "All of south Louisiana is sinking." He goes on to explain how the oil companies built canals through the marsh to bring boats and floating platforms into the gulf. The currents and tide action eroded the banks of the canals away and salt water made its way into the marshes, killing the plant life. "I'm only 23 and I can see the difference," his daughter Kristen adds.

Jim Seida / msnbc.com
Crawfish, corn, potatoes, onions, garlic and sausage at Mike Ballay's home.

Calvin Treadway, a retired oil worker from across the street sets down his beer and says, "Everything in the country can go upside-down and the people here survive.  We've got shrimp, crabs, crawfish, trout … you can survive here."  Then, after a pause, he adds, "This oil can take it all away."

GULFPORT, Miss. - A state Sierra Club official struck out today at British Petroleum and said his organization would ask the Obama administration to militarize the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

"This is America's Chernobyl … It's going to destroy the Mississippi Gulf Coast as we know it," said Louie Miller, the Mississippi director of the Sierra Club. He said BP's response to the disaster had not been adequate.

David Friedman / msnbc.com
Louie Miller, the Mississippi director of the Sierra Club, speaks at a press conference in Gulfport, Miss.

Miller spoke at a press conference in Gulfport, Miss., aboard an excursion boat that normally would take tourists to Ship Island, an undeveloped barrier island 11 miles offshore. Joining Miller at the press conference were several charter boat captains concerned for their future business.

Louis Skrmetta, CEO of Ship Island Excursions, estimates he has $3 million invested in three tourism boats. He says his company is prepared for 50,000 passengers this summer, but he fears the business could be bankrupted because of the oil spill. His family has operated excursion boats out of Gulfport for 84 years.

David Friedman / msnbc.com
Excursion boats in Gulfport, Miss.

"There's nothing better than Mississippi brown shrimp, and we've lost it," Skrmetta said, adding, "and maybe our children and grandchildren have too."

BILOXI, Miss. - Sean Desporte, a fifth-generation co-owner of Desporte & Sons Seafood Market and Deli, talks about the rush of customers he's getting because of the oil spill in the Gulf. The Biloxi, Miss., business has been open for more than 110 years, and family members spanning three generations pitch in to help

VIDEO: Gulf Coast residents stock up on seafoodÂ

 

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is moving faster and growing much quicker than estimated, one Miami scientist told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Satellite images analyzed by the University of Miami show the oil slick has expanded from the size of Rhode Island to the size of Puerto Rico, said Hans Graber, director of the university's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.

He told AP the size of the slick was about 1,150 square miles on Thursday. By the end of Friday, it had tripled to about 3,850 square miles, he said.

PORT SULPHUR, La. – Mother Nature is not cooperating at all. The biggest problem that everyone is talking about here right now is the wind.

The wind is coming directly out of the southeast, pushing all the oil northwest, towards Louisiana. The sustained winds are at 23 miles an hour right now – gusting to the mid-30s. And it's just been non-stop for two days.

That's devastating for the Louisiana coastline because it puts it right smack in the path of the oil.

VIDEO: What's at stake for the environment?

And it's coming at exactly the wrong time in terms of wildlife. This is the nesting season here for birds. It's the sparring season for marine life. It's the migratory bird season – meaning tens of thousands more birds will be coming into this area over the next couple of weeks. And it's the traditional start of the shrimping season. And now with the oil coming in – that's not going to work.

State officials in Louisiana shut down fishing waters to the east of the Mississippi River. And the western waters are also being watched very carefully to see if oil gets in there. 

Those waters to the east of the Mississippi are shut down to shrimping, oystering and fishing. And those fishermen now have no way to make a living this season. Many of them have given up and are now signing up to join the oil clean-up efforts because that's the only way they can make money.

Today in Port Sulphur, La. almost all the boats are in port. Normally this would be a bustling, busy weekend day. But nobody is going out – either because of the wind or because of the problems in the water.

They are all very concerned that if this oil comes in and fouls their oystering beds, their shrimping grounds, they are going to be out of luck. They are going to lose their livelihoods. And they have expensive loans to pay off on those boats. All kinds of people who service the fishing industry – the people who supply them the fuel, the ice, the mechanical work, restaurant owners – are going to be hurt by this.

So this is potentially both an ecological and economic disaster for this part of Louisiana.

A scientist we spoke to yesterday described the situation in a very poetic way. She said typically this is the happiest time of the year in the wetlands. It's the nesting time, the spawning time, the migratory birds are coming in – its spring time and everything is starting all over again typically.

But instead of it being the happiest time in the wetlands – it's the time of greatest concern because of the oil threatening the wildlife, the wetlands and the fishing industry.

Amid news that President Barack Obama is heading to the Gulf Coast on Sunday to get a firsthand look at the oil spill, a New York Times editorial takes aim at the administration for "not moving aggressively or swiftly enough" in response to the crisis:

"A White House as politically attuned as this one should have been conscious of two obvious historical lessons. One was the Exxon Valdez, where a late and lame response by both industry and the federal government all but destroyed one of the country's richest fishing grounds and ended up costing billions of dollars. The other was President George W. Bush's hapless response to Hurricane Katrina.

Now we have another disaster in more or less the same neck of the woods, and it takes the administration more than a week to really get moving."

Click here to read the complete New York Times editorial.