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.

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