Surprisingly, despite bans on fishing off the coast and well-publicized closing of some of the state’s oyster beds, many businesses and local restaurants that specialize in seafood said they have yet to feel the effects of the oil spill.

Every stride that Louis Chavira took was another step into oily waters. His boots were covered in chocolate-colored mulch mixed with dirt and his hands were encased in grimy gloves. Leaning in to scoop up another shovelful of oil and dirt, he let out a deep sigh.

“Somebody’s got to do it,” said Chavira, a resident of Grand Isle, La. “I’m a lifetime resident of this parish, and I’ve made a lot of my living on the water. If this doesn’t get under control very fast, we could lose all these wetlands.”

To the untrained eye, the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on the marshlands of Southern Louisiana might not be easily recognizable from the air. But one look at the oil-stained sand dunes about 20 miles from Venice, La., and the reality of the ever-encroaching oil becomes apparent.

A former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, and Bob Graham, a former Florida governor and Democratic U.S. senator, will head the seven-person commission, Obama said.

The Louisiana Children’s Museum is opening its massive blue doors to families who have been affected by the oil spill along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

For the past month, Laura Underwood, a hair stylist in Houma, La., has swept the floor of the Aha! salon, gathering hair clippings and stuffing them into grocery bags. She also asked other salons for their leftover hair but under one condition—that they wash it first.

Since late April, salons in different parts of the country have been gathering excess hair from haircuts in hopes it would be used to clean up the oil spill. But even though the idea was rejected on Friday by the people in charge of all response efforts, neither the salons nor the organization that started the initiative are letting up.

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.

The use of booms made of hair and fur in the efforts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was rejected on Friday by the Unified Area Command for the Deepwater Horizon/BP Response, which is in charge of all response efforts.

On Thursday, a Greenpeace boat with seven journalists aboard traveled along the Gulf Coast and stopped at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Then they saw it: The oil spill causing one of the worst environmental disasters in the country’s history. Sadly, there was not enough space for me on the boat.