Cap collecting Gulf oil, still unclear how much

Waves of gooey tar balls crashed into the white sands of the Florida Panhandle this morning as BP engineers adjusted a sophisticated cap over the Gulf oil gusher, trying to collect the crude now fouling four states.

Even though the inverted funnel-like device was set over the leak late Thursday, crude continued to spew into the sea in the nation's worst oil spill.

Engineers hoped to close several open vents on the cap throughout the day in the latest attempt to contain the oil.

As they worked on the system underwater, the effect of the BP spill was widely seen.

Swimmers at Pensacola Beach rushed out the water after wading into the mess. Brown pelicans coated in chocolate syruplike oil flailed and struggled in the surf on a Louisiana island.

The oil on the beaches of East Grand Terre near Grand Isle, La., were stained in hues of rust and crimson, much like the color of drying blood.

"In Revelations, it says the water will turn to blood. That's what it looks like out here — like the Gulf is bleeding," said

P. J. Hahn, director of coastal z o n e ma n a g eme n t f o r Plaquemines Parish as he kneeled down to take a picture of an oil-coated feather. "This is going to choke the life out of everything."

President Barack Obama was set to visit the Louisiana coast today, his second trip in a week and the third since the disaster unfolded following an April 20 oil rig explosion. Eleven workers were killed.

A mile below the water's surface, the cap has different colored hoses loosely attached to it to help combat the near-freezing temperatures and icylike crystals that could clog it. The device started pumping oil and gas to a tanker on the surface overnight, but it wasn't clear how much.

"Progress is being made, but we need to caution against overoptimism," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the disaster.

He said a very rough estimate of current collection would be about 42,000 gallons a day, though he stressed the information was anecdotal.

Robots a mile beneath the Gulf were shooting chemical dispersants at the escaping oil — though it looked more like flares when illuminated a mile underwater.

To put the cap in place, BP had to slice off the main pipe with giant shears after a diamond- edged saw became stuck.

By doing so, they risked increasing the flow by as much as 20 percent, though Allen said it was still too soon to know whether that had happened.

"Once the containment cap is on and it's working, we hope the rate i s s igni f icant l y reduced," he said.

The jagged cut forced crews to use a looser fitting cap, but Allen did not rule out trying to again smooth out the cut with the diamond saw if officials aren't satisfied with the current cap.

The best chance to plug the leak is a pair of relief wells, which are at least two months away. The well has spit out between 22 million and 47 million gallons of oil, according to government estimates.