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Tar Balls Roll onto Panama City Beach

June 21, 2010 -- Small tar balls were spotted this weekend on Panama City Beach. It's the farthest east the oil from the BP spill has made it so far.

Aboard the Coast Guard’s brand new 45-foot RBM utility boat, Chief Warrant Officer Chuck Bush is monitoring the oil offshore.  He leans out the window to watch specks of tar about the size of golf balls, floating atop the emerald water.

“See the little brown, look like jelly floating?” he says, “that’s what that is right there.” 

The ship is roughly 7-1/2 miles out from Panama City Beach, where tar balls have already started washing ashore.

“[It’s] nothing near as dramatic as what you’re seeing on TV, you know farther to the west of us,” Bush says.

There are sporadic onshore tar ball sightings along the Panhandle, but this is the furthest east the patties have arrived so far. 

Florida Governor Charlie Crist took a boat tour out of Port St. Joe on Sunday to view efforts to keep more of the oil from reaching the Panhandle’s beaches.  In a letter to President Obama, Florida Senator Bill Nelson and California’s Barbra Boxer called for the Navy to coordinate efforts to combat the spill.

Click here to listen to a report from Florida Public Radio’s Trimmel Gomes, who was on board the Coast Guard vessel this weekend.

 

 

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