Despite reports saying that oil is dissipating from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, local officials beg to differ and are pushing for continued commitment to the cleanup effort.

Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, La., believes the cleanup effort is being prematurely scaled back even though oil is still showing up on the coast and the surface of the water.

Photo distributed by Plaquemines Parish

A large mass of oil in Barataria Bay, near Wilkinson Canal, is shown in this photo taken on Thursday. It was released by the Plaquemines Parish government to show that, in contrast to recent reports, there is still plenty of oil on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

"They say they are not (pulling back) but already they have canceled catering contracts, they've stopped production of boom at factories," Nungesser said at a press conference Thursday.

"We know there's a lot of oil out there," Nungesser said. "It's going to continue to come ashore, and we're going to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they're there until all the oil is gone out of the Gulf of Mexico before we pull all of the assets out of our parish."

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's oil spill response chief, said at a separate briefing Thursday that oil has dispersed so much that it’s hard to spot.

"We continue to conduct intensive surveillance in the post storm week looking for oil. As we have talked before it's more dispersed and harder to find."

But Nungesser found that assessment hard to believe.

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"Yesterday there was a flight where no oil was seen. I don't know how they took that flight, but they must have bobbed and weaved around the oil because in Plaquemines Parish there is oil all over," Nungesser said.

His office released photos Thursday of a large stretch of oil in Barataria Bay, near Wilkinson Canal, showing three boats in the vicinity: one skimmer, one running through it, and a third nearby.

"Once again, I’m disappointed that just when I thought we were getting better, there’s no boats out there to pick up this oil that is destined to land in the marsh and destroy more wetlands and more wildlife," said Nungesser. "Where’s the sense of urgency?"

- NBC News Mary Murray and msnbc.com's Petra Cahill

By Mike Brunker, msnbc.com writer and editor

The vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been more traumatic than Hurricane Katrina for coastal residents, with 30 percent of those interviewed apparently suffering mild to serious psychological distress, according to a survey by a health care provider released Thursday.

The survey of 406 Gulf Coast residents, conducted for the nonprofit Ochsner Health System, found that the mental health impacts from the BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill were greatest for residents of Louisiana, the young and the poor.

Eighteen percent of Louisiana residents were suffering “probable serious” or “probable mild-moderate” mental illness based on the K6 psychological distress scale – more than double the rate found in a similar survey conducted in July 2007, two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the state, the survey found. Fourteen percent of Floridians, 12 percent of Mississippians and 10 percent of Alabamans were similarly afflicted, it said.

Hardest hit were residents earning less than $25,000 annually, 32 percent of whom appeared to have “probable serious” mental illness on the K6 scale, it said.

Young respondents (22 to 44 years old) were in the same category, with money and work being the two biggest causes of their stress.

You can read more about the survey by clicking here.

Washington Post reporter Jia Lynn Yang reported Tuesday afternoon that BP plans to seek a tax credit of up to $10 billion from the U.S. government, or about half the amount it pledged to aid victims of the disaster.

The company cites steep losses from the Gulf Coast oil spill.

Yang dug the news out of the company's second-quarter earnings report that said it would record a $32.2 billion charge to reflect the costs of the spill.

"Under U.S. corporate tax law, companies can take credits on up to 35 percent of their losses. For BP, that means a savings on its tax bill of about $10 billion," Yang wrote. "The credit could mean, however, that taxpayers will indirectly foot the bill for the $20 billion fund that BP launched to compensate people and businesses harmed by the disaster."

Read the rest of the Washington Post report here.

By F. Brinley Bruton, msnbc.com staff

LONDON – As BP CEO Tony Hayward resigned under a cloud Tuesday, thousands of British motorists got an unexpected reminder of the oil spill that's wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Mexico.

Protesters with the environmental group Greenpeace said they shut off fuel supplies at 46 BP gas stations across London just in time for the morning rush-hour. Small teams of activists used a standard shut-off switch to stop the flow of fuel oil at the targeted stations. The switches were then removed to prevent most BP outlets in the capital from opening.

Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Demonstrators stand outside a BP petrol station, which they have barricaded with fences, in London on Tuesday.

And to ensure there was no chance of drivers buying gas, demonstrators in fluorescent vests and helmets locked green metal fences around some sites.

"What BP needs to do is not just change CEOs it needs to actually come up with a new strategy," Greenpeace U.K.’s chief executive John Sauven said at one of the shuttered stations in Camden, north London.

Sauven said BP must live up to its pledge to move "beyond petroleum" and stop focusing on squeezing oil from places like the Gulf of Mexico, Canada's tar sands and the fragile Arctic wilderness.

'Holding us to ransom'
Anna Jones, who was one of the handful up at dawn to ensure gas stations were shuttered, took a harder line.

"Big companies like BP are holding us to ransom, chasing profits at the expense of us," the 29-year-old part-time dance teacher said. "The generation before us is largely responsible and the next generation coming up will have to deal with the consequences."

A BP spokesman described the group's protest as "an irresponsible and childish act which is interfering with safety systems." The firm claimed that only a handful of stations had been prevented from opening.

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Londoners had mixed views on Greenpeace's actions.

Daniel Watson, a 41-year-old teacher and tuba player, said BP should recognize the problems of global warming and dependence on petroleum products.

"We are still living in the illusion that we can live on fossil fuels indefinitely," he added. "There is this kind of approach that it is somebody else’s problem."

Golden handshake
Big firms also need to stop handing out big packages to disgraced executives, he said. Hayward's golden handshake included a $1.6 million payoff and pension pot valued at about $17 million.

"We need controls so that doing a bad job doesn’t get rewarded," Watson said.

Steve, who has driven a London cab for 37 years and only gave his first name, said he wanted to do something to "save the whales" but branded the protests targeting gas station as "stunts."

However, Hayward's payout and the behavior of many other executives left the cabbie annoyed.

"Some of cleverest guys can be the stupidest when it comes to the real world – I see that in my job all the time."

But not everyone thought Greenpeace was on the right track.

"Is everybody going to skip driving cars, heating our houses, flying? Get a grip,” said Kathy Wallace, a Canadian who was on her way home to Scotland. “The environment is going to hell anyway, we've already ruined it. All we can do is control the situation."

Oil spill workers toiling along the Gulf Coast have suffered 1,753 illnesses and injuries, according to most recent figures from BP. That’s more than double the tally of a month ago.

Records collected from April 22 through July 15 include 718 illnesses ranging from dehydration and heat exhaustion to seasickness, and 1035 injuries, mostly cuts, bruises and strains caused by accidents. On July 11, for instance, a worker slipped and caught his arm on a fish hook, which was embedded so deeply it reached the bone.

Meanwhile, as of Wednesday, poison control centers had received 863 calls from people in 18 states reporting exposures to oil and dispersants, with symptoms that include headaches, nausea, vomiting and dizziness. People who called from states outside the Gulf Coast region may have been in the area to work or visit or may have family there, said a staffer with the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

Another 536 people have called seeking information about the health effects of the spill, according to the poison centers.

The largest number of reports has come from Louisiana, where health officials have logged 290 health complaints, including 216 from workers and 74 from the general population. Most frequent symptoms include headache, dizziness and nausea.

After nearly 100 days of reporting on the Gulf oil spill, how do you find new angles on what seems like an already well-covered story?

NBC News Chief Environmental Correspondent Anne Thompson explains how she and her crew stay on top of the ongoing environmental disaster by exploring new reporting avenues every day.

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One way is to send NBC News’ Kerry Sanders, who has been covering the Gulf oil spill for the last three months, as close to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico’s as he can get in a submarine.

One vexing question Kerry has had in his reporting is: Can you see the oil down below the surface?

In an effort to answer that question, Kerry and his team of cameramen and engineers have gone to great technical lengths. With the help of a group of scientists, he’s going to try to go about 1,000- 1,800 feet below the surface to look at deepwater coral and try to see if the oil is in the loop current.

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From broadcasting live TV from a ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico to trying to broadcast live from a submarine – Kerry explains the "amazing technical challenges" and the team effort it takes to bring the story home.

Catherine Chomiak, NBC News

-- From the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command Ongoing Response statistics (last updated July 18, 2010)

• More than 6,490 vessels are currently responding on site
• More than 3.4 million feet of containment boom and 7.2 million feet of sorbent boom have been deployed to contain the spill—and approximately 852,000 feet of containment boom and 3 million feet of sorbent boom are available.
• More than 34.2 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.
• Approximately 1.82 million gallons of total dispersant have been applied—1.07 million on the surface and 771,000 sub-sea. Approximately 574,000 gallons are available.
• Approximately 615 miles of Gulf Coast shoreline is currently oiled—approximately 352 miles in Louisiana, 112 miles in Mississippi, 69 miles in Alabama, and 82 miles in Florida.
• Approximately 83,927 square miles of Gulf of Mexico federal waters remain closed to fishing in order to balance economic and public health concerns.

Despite the abundance of information provided by the Deepwater Horizon Response team, as the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico surpasses three months without a permanent solution, public anger against BP continues to overflow online. Web sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr have become active platforms for people to express their frustration with the oil giant and the current environmental crisis.

The "flow rate" of rising anger can be measured online almost as precisely as the gushing oil that incited it on: "Boycott BP." The site, one of more than 500 Facebook pages related to the oil disaster, is dedicated to boycotting "BP stations until the spill is cleaned up," and has 827,164 fans and counting. There are at least 164,000 YouTube videos capturing various protests; more than 36,606 Flickr photos related to the spill; and approximately 78 new tweets per minute continue to keep the oil spill ranking among Twitter's top trending topics.

A search for "BP" on YouTube typically yields clips like one posted by someone going by the name "annebonnylives" of a protest outside a local BP station. "The Raging Grannies," a group of elderly activists, have been staging their singing protests against Halliburton and BP in southern Florida.

Their song "BP's Friggin' Drillin' Rigs," which is sung to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," recommends the two companies "take your friggin' drillin' rigs 'cause we don't want your oil! / Halliburton and BP – you suck!" The video has gone viral, with more than 50,516 views.

Another Floridian, Stan Morton, is "real mad" at BP— so mad, in fact, that he has posted 49 videos, all critical of BP. In one five-minute video, he rants against the company and spills his yard debris in the parking lot of a BP gas station.

There are at least 36,606 photos associated with the Gulf of Mexico disaster on Flickr. User Starflyer2012, posted 88 photos from a May 28th protest at a Manhattan BP station, where hundreds of activists showed up looking as if they were covered in oil.

In addition to posting protest pictures, many people online have doctored BP's green and yellow logo to reflect the leak. Flickr member BWJ, combined BP's logo with Sherwin Williams' to "cover the earth" with black paint. Edited logos, like BWJ's, can even be submitted in a contest sponsored by Greenpeace, who used Flickr to create a "Behind the Logo group." There have been 1,111 entries so far.

To combat the growing body of negative content online, BP's own social media team has ramped up their online presence and is in the process of migrating their DeepwaterHorizonresponse.com site to RestoreTheGulf.gov.

They have set up their own accounts and pages on YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, where BP's Twitter handle BP_America has more than 18,338 followers. The company has also purchased search terms on Google and Yahoo, so their sponsored pages are at the top of the results.

BP's YouTube channel includes a video gallery of clips about the company's oil spill cleanup efforts, the release of clean, oil-free birds and presentations by BP officials about ongoing strategies to contain and clean up the crude.

As of Monday, July 19, the Making it Right commercial has been viewed 319, 482 times.

In Pensacola Beach, Fla., the county Chamber of Commerce and VisitPensacola.com have produced a light-hearted video paid for by BP.

Actors portraying BP clean-up workers are shown enjoying all the attractions in town - from skipping down the beach to going for a bike ride to taking in the nightlife - in an attempt to draw visitors back to the region. Over a montage of Pensacola scenes, text reads, "The cleanup goes on. But the fun never stopped. Pensacola."

Watch the full clip, titled "Clean Up Fun," that Visit Pensacola posted on YouTube.

See Mark Potter's complete report on NBC News' Nightly News that included a clip from the video.

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GRAND ISLE, La. – To hear it from permanent residents of this tiny town at the southernmost edge of the bayou, the community is under siege. Not only did the massive oil spill in the Gulf force an abrupt halt to age-old routines dictated mainly by fishing, but the cleanup up effort has brought an army of workers from "outside."

"It's a drastic change for us, especially in our marinas. It's all workers," said Sheriff Euris DuBois. "The biggest change is we don't know them. They are a different nature."

Photo by Kari Huus/ msnbc.com

Grand Isle Sheriff Euris DuBois in his office on July 12.

Grand Isle has only about 1,500 permanent residents, most born here, said DuBois. They are accustomed to a large influx of families who own the cottages – or "camps" that line the beachfront. But this year, with the beaches off limits and fishing shut down, most of these perennial tourists have stayed away.

Instead there are an estimated 5,000 cleanup workers – from Texas, New Jersey, Alabama and elsewhere. The workers are all male, and the vast majority are black.

That alone is a shock here. The town has only one black permanent resident, said DuBois, and no black tourists that he can recall.

A cool reception
"And they congregate!" a waitress named Jane told diners from out of town as she described the situation, repeating rumors that there was also a rash of theft and violence. "It's bad to where our pastor on Sunday warned the congregation to lock their doors."

Some black workers report they have had a cool reception.

"I don't go out here. I am not welcome," said a worker from Houston who only gave his first name, John. Asked why he felt unwelcome, he said wryly, "uh, just a teeny bit of racism."

A co-worker chimed in: "They gouge us (on rent). They don't want us here," he said. "But we just do the work cleaning up their environment."

Compounding the tension, many companies working down in Grand Isle are renting the beach homes for their workers to stay since all the motels are jam packed. With space scarce, they pay about $100 per night per person right now.

"Some individuals are teed off because they have a group of blacks renting next door," instead of the familiar tourists, said Sheriff DuBois. "But there is no law against that."

Locals want the jobs
In addition, some of the locals are angry because outsiders are getting jobs cleaning up when they have tried and failed to get hired by BP. The beach cleanup crews are mostly under contractors from Texas here, and some of the boats hired to lay boom or help with skimming are from other parts of the Gulf coast.

"We want people from here – Thibodoux, Gretna, Grand Isle [towns in the parish] to get the jobs," said Bradley Hall who came down from Gretna to work but has failed to get a job on the cleanup.

"They don't like any of us," said a captain from New Jersey who is running a boat in the cleanup.

"It's not just blacks. It's Yankees, and everybody who is not from Grand Isle," he said, giving only his first name, Mike.

DuBois dismissed the notion that because of the influx of workers there is also a crime wave.

"Are things missing here more than before? No. No more than normal," he said. "Fighting? Yeah, we get complaints late at night – fights in bars."

But he said that would be going on anyway.

"They just took the place of the tourists," he said.

One spark for the widespread rumors was an actual incident: A few weeks back, outside Cisco's Hideaway on the other side of the island, a worker was stabbed and seriously wounded by another, who has since disappeared. The suspect has been identified and there is an active search ongoing.

Dubois went on the radio to assure people that there was no crime wave in Grand Isle – no one has been raped, he said, to counter that rumor, and the level of theft and petty crime is about normal, he said. And he noted that there are more than 200 security personnel on the 7-mile long strip, including local police, state troopers and many security people hired by BP and the oil spill contractors.

Even so, the government is moving to ease the strains. According to DuBois, the local government is planning to bring in a ship that can sleep 400 workers, in order to move some of the workers out of residential areas.

"If you have a big influx of strangers in a small town, it's natural to have a backlash," he said.