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Louisiana closed the shrimping beds west of the mississippi. as you know, fishing has been closed all along the state waters east of the mississippi and seafood is a crucial industry down here, as is charter boat fishing. and communities like venice have been impacted severely by this oil spill, even though oil has yet to reach its shores. alex? >> yeah. you know what, ann, you're saying at the top of your report a whole bunch of ifs and we hope and all that, and you said 48 hours. granted we know this hasn't been done before at this level under the ocean of nearly a mile down, but is anybody ...

Failure of fail-safe equipment may have caused the explosion. right now, crews are waiting for a 100-ton concrete and steel dome to completely settle into the mud to contain all that gushing oil. nbc chief environmental affairs correspondent ann thompson is live for us in venice, louisiana. so ann, with a good morning, the containment efforts, how do things look so far? what are you hearing? >> reporter: well, so far, so good. alex, they were able to get that dome, first of all, into the water. and now it is settling on the sea floor bed, above the biggest leak down there. and so all of that i...

Failure of fail-safe equipment apparently is what caused that deadly explosion. right now crews are waiting for a 110-ton concrete and steel box to settle around that mud and the ruptured well to contain most of that gushing oil. correspondent ann thompson is live for us in venice, louisiana. ann, good morning to you. what's the latest on this containment effort? >> reporter: good morning, alex. as you said, the cruiser keeping a very close eye on that containment dome. it was placed over the leak site late yesterday afternoon. it is now settling into the sea floor, and so far things are going...

Bottom as they put it in exactly the right place where it needs to go. >> david mattingly in venice, thanks. with every hour that passes, the crisis in the gulf worsens. threatening some of the most sensitivity wetlands. the chandeleur islands are a refuge there. an exclusive look at a large orange slick on to have and underneath the water. take a look. >> reporter: the water is about 18 inches deep. i've seen some fish swimming through it. to get a better glimpse as to what it looks like under there, let's look with our under water camera. one of the biggest concerns here with the oil spill...

Jon: right now in the gulf of mexico a massive and technically-tricky operation underway. just before dawn bp crews began lowering a 100-ton containment dome, looks like a small townhouse, to try to drop it over the main source of the oil leak that could turn into an environmental disaster. trace gallagher is live for us in venice, louisiana, right now. how long before they get that thing on top of the leak, trace? >> reporter: well, jon, it's about 4,000 feet down which means it's a thousand feet above the sea floor, and the leak, it should be on there sometime this the next couple of hours. ...