Federal officials said on Friday that they have found 60 birds and 186 sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico that they believe are victims of the oil spill crisis, according to The Associated Press. As an underwater well continues to spew thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf, the impact of the spill is becoming more visible.

The public beach at Grand Isle, La., was closed Friday as visible blobs of oil washed ashore. Another portion of the seas off the Louisiana coast were closed to recreational and commercial fishing at sunset Friday. These areas are off of lower Jefferson Parish, from the eastern shore of Barataria Pass to the western shore of Caminada Pass. These closures come as the result of a field survey and seafood testing of the area, according to Robert Barham, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

As the effects of the spill widen, it’s still a numbers game as to how much oil is being disgorged. Tim Crone, a research scientist at Columbia University, has estimated that 1.68 million gallons to 4.2 million gallons a day was flowing into the Gulf. Steve Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, said he will likely cut his estimate of 3.9 million gallons a day, after BP said about half of what is flowing out of the pipe is gas, not oil. His estimate, which has a 20 percent margin of error, includes about 1 million gallons coming from a leak at the blowout preventer, away from the main leak.

Ian McDonald, a Florida State University oceanographer and expert tracking the spill, said the spill’s surface slick is now more than 14,600 square miles, larger than the states of Maryland and Delaware combined.

The Unified Area Command for the Deepwater Horizon/BP Response said that as of Friday it had recovered more than 8.94 million gallons of oily water and set up 17 staging areas including those at Grand Isle, La., Biloxi, Miss., and Pensacola, Fla.

The command also announced it will not use human-hair booms in its response efforts, saying they were less effective than commercial products.

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