Tourism-dependent Florida braces for hit as next Gulf oil front

Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: …Florida Governor Charlie Crist said he hoped the impact on his state would not be as severe as the oozing, toxic soup the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has created in marshlands further west.

Florida's fabled beaches are the top draw of its tourism industry, its number-one money-mover. The state attracts about 80 million visitors a year, bringing in 60 billion dollars, state data show. "Hopefully," he said, the oil would not appear in "the way it has been showing up in Louisiana. It is easy to clean up off the beaches, as we were able to do this past weekend in Pensacola. We were disappointed that it came on the beach at all but able to clean it up fairly rapidly," he told CNN.

"It is much more difficult is what we have seen in Louisiana, when it gets into the marshes and the estuaries, once it gets in there, it is very difficult to clean up. We are trying to do the very best we can with the resources that we have," he said.

…Not only brought in by the tidal waters, seaweed washing up on the beach also carried the orange-brown staining oil globules, deadly for organisms that live on it. The fishing pier here was doing below-normal business, with barely three dozen anglers on its entire length….

Kayakers at the Pensacola Naval Air Station detour around oil containment boom at Sherman Cove aboard the base. The boom was set to protect environmentally sensitive grass beds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. U.S. Navy photo by Patrick Nichols/Released