the government dont really know what to do. the people in the oil field business can tell them what they need. the government aint in the shrimping business, either. they cant tell shrimpers how to go catch shrimp, so they cant tell b.p. how to clean up, because that is not the government's job. >> reporter: in his younger days, lods was a fisherman. he plans to volunteer to work on a shrimp boat for free, if he can find one still operating, because he wants to experience that one more time, in case the oil disaster prevents him from ever shrimping again. >> brown: yesterday, a team of federal scientists released a report estimating that the size of the gulf spill had surpassed that of the 1989 exxon valdez disaster, making it the worst in u.s. history. but the full extent of the damage to the environment is only slowly becoming clearer, with many questions still unanswered. we get more on that now from david hollander, professor of chemical oceanography at the university of south florida's college of marine science. professor