NEW ORLEANS
With hurricane-whipped waves pushing more oil onto the Gulf of Mexico's once-white beaches, the government pinned its latest cleanup hopes yesterday on a huge new piece of equipment -- the world's largest oil-skimming vessel.
The Taiwanese-flagged former tanker named the "A Whale" is the length of 31/2 football fields and stands 10 stories high. It just emerged from an extensive retrofitting to prepare it specifically for the Gulf, where officials hope it will be able to suck up as much as 21 million gallons of oil-fouled water a day.
"It is absolutely gigantic. It's unbelievable," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University who saw the ship last week in Norfolk, Va.
As the huge vessel made its way toward the Gulf Coast, large waves churned up by distant Hurricane Alex left Alabama beaches splattered with oil and tar balls the size of apples. The rough seas forced most smaller skimming boats into port for a second consecutive day, putting many cleanup crews at a standstill.
The ship looks like a typical tanker, but it takes in contaminated water through 12 vents on either side of the bow. The oil is then supposed to be separated from the water and transferred to another vessel. The water is channeled back into the sea.
But the ship has never been tested, and many questions remain about how it will operate. For instance, the seawater retains trace amounts of oil, even after getting filtered, so the Environmental Protection Agency will have to sign off on allowing the treated water back into the Gulf.
"This is a no-brainer," Overton said.
"You're bringing in really dirty, oily water, and you're putting back much cleaner water."
The ship arrived yesterday in Louisiana coastal waters, where a tryout of the ship is planned. The Coast Guard will have the final say in whether the vessel can operate in the Gulf.
Meanwhile along parts of the Gulf, red flags snapped in strong gusts, warning people to stay out of the water, and long stretches of beach were stained brown from tar balls and crude oil that had been pushed in as far as 60 yards from the water.
Oil deposits appeared worse than in past days, and local officials feared that the temporary stop to skimming operations near the coast would make matters only worse ahead of the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
In other developments yesterday:
• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will coordinate a plan that calls for the collection in the coming weeks of about 70,000 sea-turtle eggs in up to 800 nests buried on beaches across the Florida Panhandle and Alabama. It has never been done before on a such a massive scale, but experts agree that doing nothing could lead to unprecedented deaths.
• Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said that BP's disaster-response plan for an oil spill doesn't mention hurricanes or tropical storms. Markey said that the omission is yet another example of what BP was not prepared to handle.
His comments came during a congressional hearing on a law to improve technology intended to prevent such disasters as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
• Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency said that their first round of testing on chemicals used to break apart the oil shows that all of the available dispersants are generally equally toxic. Paul Anastas, EPA's assistant administrator for research and development, said that the testing also showed that the chemicals are far less toxic than oil.
• An Interior Department official said that the government is soon expected to issue more permits for drilling in the shallow waters of the Gulf.
The decision would not affect the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed in the aftermath of the BP disaster.
• In Washington, Congress took the first steps on a number of bills responding to the oil disaster, including lifting liability caps for damages from an oil spill, revamping federal regulation of oil drilling, and requiring more robust technology to prevent blowouts of wells.
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