Gulf Coast Beaches One Year After the Oil Spill

Officials measure the distance of a fish thrown at the Flora-Bama Lounge, Package Oyster Bar at the 27th Annual Interstate Mullet Toss in Pensacola, Fla., Sunday afternoon, May 1, 2011. The fundraising event takes place on the Florida-Alabama state line, with participants tossing a fish from Florida into Alabama. It draws thousands to the white sand beaches that just last summer were intermittently tainted with oil and tarballs from the leaking BP Macondo well that spewed millions of gallons of oil after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April 2010. According to the Alabama Tourism Department, visitors to beaches in the area were down by 1 million from the year before, down from 4.6 million to 3.6 million.

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