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you know, we re actually not. there s really been no advances in surface remediation, surface cleanup. they may have more skimmers, but skimmers don t work in ocean waves. they only work in flat water. and so oil that does come to the surface does end up in the wetlands and does end up on the beach. keep in mind, too, that in deep water, when you have a spill like this, almost 90% of the oil never even comes to the surface. it s in the deep water column damaging the sea life and could be there for months and years, we don t know how long it would last there. is there any progress to report in terms of shutting down deep water spills? in terms of dealing with deep water emergencies? i remember back covering the bp spill while it was still ongoing for the 87 days, you hear people talk about, this is equivalent to doing engineering on the moon, trying to invent equipment to operate in environments where, not just americans, but humans don t have, don t really
suck that stuff off the ocean. half a dozen supertankers, a million barrels each, could hold a whole lot of liquid, but you know why we re not doing that and nobody is willing to talk about it? there s a little law called the jones act which prohibits foreign-built marine ships from operating in domestic waters in order to protect the domestic ship building industry, but nobody has the courage to say let s waive the jones act and get these supertankers in here to clean up the mess so it doesn t hit the beach in the first place. and real quick what s the rationale behind the jones act, and then i m going to let you go. it was to protect the u.s. ship building industry, but it didn t work. all the supertankers are built in korea, china, japan, anywhere but the u.s. and you re saying because of this jones act, supertankers are not allowed to go into the gulf of mexico to to do surface cleanup? to operate in domestic waters. they can only go point to point, delivering oil and l