The state-sponsored construction of sand berms was started in two places off Louisiana's fragile barrier islands and wetlands to keep the oil at bay,
state officials say. But a dispute between state and federal authorities
over where it is safe to dredge halted one project this week after 690,000 cubic yards of dredged material had been made available for berms.

In addition to the engineers and cleanup workers, more than 500 federal and state wildlife specialists are working on rescuing oiled animals and oiled habitat, said a BP spokesman, John Curry. That does not include an
undetermined number of staff members and wildlife experts from nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups.

Q. How are vessels assigned to work in various areas of the spill?

A. The captains of these so-called vessels of opportunity register with the joint command and are assigned to work in a lottery, with the number picked
on any given day based on regional need, said Michael R. Abendhoff, BP's director of government and public affairs. "We're focusing on getting
fishermen to work in an area they know," he said.

Dispersant

Q. Is BP using anything to break up the oil?

A. BP has used large amounts of chemical dispersant in an attempt to reduce
the damage caused by oil coming from the broken well. To date, it has
sprayed 977,000 gallons of dispersant on the gulf's surface as well as
applied 501,000 gallons to the leak, the company says. It is the largest
volume of dispersants ever applied to a spill in United States waters.

Dispersants are detergent-like compounds that cause the oil to break up into tiny droplets, which sink below the surface and can be "dispersed" by sea currents. Until now, dispersants were always applied to oil on the surface;
the deepwater application is a first.

Q. Could the chemicals themselves pose any environmental risks?

A. Although concentrated dispersant is mildly to moderately toxic, the
notion is that the diluted dispersant is less toxic than the concentrated
oil it treats. And it is far less toxic when diluted in the vast volume of
the seas.

But the use of such large volumes of dispersant, and its application in a
novel setting like the wellhead, constitute an experiment of epic
proportions. So far, officials from the Environmental Protection Agency say they have seen no ill effect from the chemicals.

BP has used dispersants from the Corexit line of products, a source of some controversy; their use has been banned in Britain because of risks they pose
to marine life along rocky coasts. Weeks ago, the E.P.A. instructed BP to identify and start using a newer, less toxic dispersant. BP did not do so, arguing that Corexit products were the best available and that there was no gold standard for evaluating the toxicity of dispersants.

Dispersant use peaked in late May. On May 26, the E.P.A. and Coast Guard instructed BP to significantly reduce the amount of dispersant it was
applying to the Gulf, and it has since done so.

Environmental Impact

Q. Has wildlife taken a hard hit? How many animals have been killed?

A. Oil is toxic to many forms of wildlife, and the spill is surely killing
or harming untold numbers of creatures at sea and on land. That said, calculating the number of fatalities specifically attributed to the oil may
be nigh impossible. Every day, federal officials release a count of dead and impaired animals that they have found along the gulf beaches since the spill began. Nearly 2,000 birds, 550 sea turtles and dozens of marine mammals have been counted.

But that tally is far from a reliable measure. For starters, it is not clear that most of those animals were killed by oil. In fact, many of the dead animals were not even visibly oiled. And many were so decomposed by the time they were spotted that postmortems will never be done.

But if the count is way off, it is probably an undercount. Most animals, particularly sea creatures, live far from where humans spot them. For every bird found covered by petroleum muck on a beach, there are untold others who simply die on an secluded beach. For every dolphin that washes ashore, there
is another that sinks at sea, and so on.

It is also virtually certain that fish larvae, which are exquisitely
sensitive to oil, are dying by the millions as well.

Q. Have any endangered species been put at risk?

A. Yes, the gulf is home to many animals officially listed as endangered,
the highest level of vulnerability, under the federal Endangered Species
Act. The largest among the permanent marine residents are sperm whales,
which like to feed right at the mouth of the Mississippi and have been
spotted in the slick. Numerous endangered species of sea turtles, including Kemp ridleys, live almost entirely within the Gulf of Mexico, as does the bulbous West Indian manatee. On land, the federal Department of Fish and Wildlife lists 17 endangered species on the beaches of Florida alone,
including four different species of beach mice. Some of these species you
have probably never heard of, like the Florida perforate cladonia, a type of lichen, but others are quite well known, like the majestic whooping crane,
only hundreds of which are thought to survive in the wild.

Q. Are coral reefs in the gulf and in the Florida Keys in danger?

A. Scientists are definitely worried about the reefs, but the ones at
greatest risk appear to be deep reefs relatively near the gushing well.
Because the well is so deep, some toxins that would rise to the surface and evaporate in a shallow oil spill are instead dissolving into the water. The worry is that they may kill or weaken deepwater marine organisms. But even relatively near the well, the concentrations of these toxins in deep water
are relatively low, so there is reason to hope for the best.

As for risk to the coral reefs in the Florida Keys, scientific opinion is
not unanimous, but most researchers have said that if any oil gets pulled
into currents that take it past the Keys, it would probably be so diluted by then that it would pose little risk to organisms.

Q. Has the damage to Louisiana's marshes and estuaries been severe?

A. Obviously, if you talk to locals, they will give you an earful about the
oil that has seeped into their local marshes and how the government is not doing nearly enough to protect this delicate resource.

However, as ugly as any oil spill is, it is unclear at this point just how
deep into the marshes the worst of the oil has penetrated. As this changes
on an almost daily basis, firsthand observation is the best source of information. For an overview, check out the interactive map at www.geoplatform.gov/gulfresponse.

Of course, the wild card here is a hurricane. A large surge of water could carry the water deep into the inner marshes, which for wildlife could mean
an even nastier game change.

Q. Is gulf seafood safe to eat?

A. Yes, experts say. Health scientists and politicians have been hammering
home this message since the spill, all the way up to President Obama, who
ate local crab cakes and shrimp salad sandwiches on television during a trip
to Gulfport, Miss. The federal government says the seafood is being tested
for dangerous chemicals by federal scientists from the Environmental
Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and
the Food and Drug Administration.

Mainly they are looking for a chemical called a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, which is a leading indicator of oil contamination. So far, all levels are safe. This is largely because the federal government closed large swaths of the gulf to fishers, shrimpers and oystermen.

Not that much seafood, speaking relatively, comes from there anyway: The
gulf supplies only 2 percent of the nation's seafood, while 83 percent is imported. Still, wary seafood eaters aren't taking any chances, causing
prices across the country to rise for fish and shrimp. So, the real thing to avoid, experts say, is an overpriced meal.

Economic Impact

Q. What will the economic impact of the spill be?

A. The final costs of the spill are difficult to predict. For now, as images
of oil-coated wildlife on Louisiana's islands fill the news, most parts of coastal Mississippi and Alabama have seen only intermittent tar balls, but
the states are suffering the same blows to their fishing and tourism industries.

In May, Nathaniel Karp, chief economist for the Alabama bank BBVA Compass, projected eventual losses for the four gulf states at $4.3 billion,
including $191 million in losses to Alabama. This month he raised that projection to $11.5 billion.

In Louisiana, seafood and tourism generate $2.4 billion a year and $8.3 billion, respectively, according to officials associated with the two industries.

The moratorium that President Obama imposed on offshore oil drilling could
also have a big economic impact and has been fought fiercely by political figures at every level in Louisiana. They argue that it would essentially be another economic hit to the state, already reeling from the fishing closures and other economic dislocation related to the spill. (A federal judge in New Orleans this week struck down the administration's moratorium; the administration said it would appeal.)

The ban would take 33 floating rigs out of commission for six months; like
many rigs in the gulf, all of these employ workers from Louisiana and are supplied by companies from Louisiana. The Louisiana State University Center
for Energy Studies calculated that the moratorium would result directly in
the loss of 3,339 jobs, and another 7,656 indirectly.

State officials are concerned about the ripple effects throughout the
economy, including lost tax revenue. They are also worried about how long it would take for drilling to resume after the end of the moratorium.



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