No fix in sight, and Reuters says there has already been serious damage to Louisiana's $2.4 billion seafood industry, which employs 27,000 people. 75% of the gulf fishery is apparently still open for fishing, but that part is more expensive to access and already "hundreds of thousands" of recreational and commercial fishers are affected. Wildlife is also increasingly affected, and tourism is way down. 20% of Florida's economy is tourism, and while things are ok there now, it won't take a lot of oil washing up before the million people employed in the sector start taking a serious hit.
While all of these are very serious concerns, I'm also nervous about the other environmental ramifications of the underwaters plumes of oil. The known impact of that is an expanse of hypoxia, which afflicts the Chesapeake to varying degrees every year (due in part to algae blooms from fertilizer runoff). It's bad enough on a relatively small scale- I'm not looking forward to seeing what that means on a larger one!
