As an orange slick of oil washed onto sandy barrier islands prized as a historic wildlife refuge, crews on Thursday worked to lower a containment vessel over a leak 5,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico, and federal officials extended a temporary freeze on new offshore drilling nationwide.
"We have now had reports of oil ashore," Coast Guard Petty Officer David Mosley said. Overflights found the sheen that marks the advancing edge of the massive slick hovering off the Louisiana coast, as well as heavier oil on both sides of the Chandeleur Islands, about 60 miles east of New Orleans.
Cleanup crews were dispatched to the crescent-shaped string of islands, which are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge created in 1904 by President Theodore Roosevelt.
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