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It’s been a hundred days since oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico forcing an enormous response effort from BP, the state, and volunteers. Now the leak has been capped and the oil is dissipating. But as Whitney Ray tells us, the state is still fighting to get claims paid, bring in visitors, and sell Florida seafood.

The leak is capped but the state’s fight to attract tourists, help the fishing industry rebound and protect the coast still rages.

Florida’s Emergency Operations Center has been at a level one activation since June 2nd, and will remain so for the near future.

“Fortunately there’s not a lot of heavy oil offshore, but there still is tar balls, there’s some weathered oil,” said Phil Wieczynsk, with the Bureau of Emergency Response.

The oil slick is shrinking daily but still threatens wildlife. Biologists are moving panhandle sea turtle nests to keep the hatchlings from swimming into the oil.

There’s still a tourism crisis. On July 18th, Visit Florida ran out of money from BP for its fight to let travelers know Florida beaches are clean.

The tourism agency waits to see if BP will cough up more cash.

“The dollars are out so we are hoping BP will come back and grant the governor the additional 50 million dollars to help with that campaign,” said Will Seccombe with Visit Florida.

At the height of the crisis a third of the gulf was closed to fishing; now just a fourth is closed. The FDA and Florida Department of Agriculture have a mobile testing lab on standby in Tallahassee, ready to do onsite tests in areas where the oil once floated.

“The samples from those areas will be subjected to both the sensory testing as well as the lab analysis,” said Terry McElroy with the Department of Agriculture.

The major fear for environmentalists now is what’s out of sight is out of mind. While experts think the risk of large amounts of oil washing ashore is low, what’s going on underneath the surface could affect fish populations for decades.

The state legislature is working on legislation to help people who have lost business and property values because of the oil leak. They plan to meet in a special session in September and pass laws that would help ease the burden for those Floridians hit the hardest.

Environmentalist Reaction

In early May, biologists and environmental experts began to worry that the BP oil spill would impact the coast for decades to come. Today, 100 days later, things are getting better. The leak has been stopped. The oil slick is shrinking, and most experts believe no more large pools of oil will wash up on any Florida beaches. Despite the good news, Julie Wraithmell with Audubon of Florida, says this disaster isn’t over because the chemicals used to break up the oil, and the oil itself, have altered the food chain.

“At the same time we all breathed a huge sigh of relief to hear they got the flow under control, it doesn’t minimize the fact that there as been a lot of oil spilled and is going to persist in that system for a long period of time,” said Wraithmell.

Florida State University and other research groups were able to collect some samples of marine life, sand, and soil before the oil reached beaches, providing a baseline to compare future samples with.