New Reports of Gulf Oil Sheen: Fishermen Report New Oil Sheen In Gulf--BP Denies Involvement

Reports of an oil sheen in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t faze residents of the coast, where small spills are spotted hundreds of times a year and many people have come to see last year’s BP catastrophe as a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Gulf Coast fishermen are back on the water and businesses are again packed with tourists on sandy shores since the disaster that hit last summer, when BP PLC’s well blew out of control, spooking tourists away from normally packed communities when beaches were left coated in crude.

BP said Thursday that the shiny substance floating on the water’s surface didn’t come from its operations, and officials said it had since dissipated. Reports of sheen are common: More than 200 were called in last year in an area far from BP’s well where the new sheen was reported, and 13 were reported Wednesday alone off Louisiana’s coast.

Residents say they aren’t afraid of a disaster like the one last summer, when millions of gallons of crude spewed into the Gulf and many scientists and fishermen wondered if the region would ever recover. MORE