we use vhf frequencies for nearshore. we put the hf transponders on those vessels of opportunities so that we could track them electronically. and ultimately our biggest concerns, i mentioned, you know, i was really have to be focused on the safety issue. and we have at one point i remember the critical number was nine. we had nine new mrs. with an aircraft. mostly in the coastal area. i think he mentioned yet a lot of different agencies that were unnecessarily duplicating effort. that actually caused safety issues. so i went to the air force. tyndall air force base there has the capacity to set up an emergency air traffic control center that they had used for the haiti earthquake. actually they can manage air traffic anywhere. they did set up there, and we had communications and air traffic management out of tyndall air force base. but the need for medications i think is still an issue. we may have come a long way with the state, county and local radio systems that are greatly improved since 9/11. i think the offshore, w

and here's the nearshore operations. and you can see here, these are using the smaller vessels, a lot of the shrimp boats, fishing vessels. these were the vessels that really didn't have the overnight capacity. so they would go out as far as they could go on a day trip, recover as much oil as they could, and then returned to port. and then the basin beach operations. a lot of boom was deployed as protective measures for these marshes. unfortunately, boom is surely not that effective. for protecting shorelines that way. the boom is the most effective if you can surround the source of the oil. but in this particular case since there was no ship out there, it was just a pipe spewing out from the bottom of the sea, a mile down. it was impossible to boom in at that source. so there's a huge attempt to try to use boom to protect these marshes, but when my time came, the wind moved, it had very mixed success. so we did a lot of fast response. we developed some techniques to get up in the air in the morning, identify where the o

the initial funds are that the majority of the necropsies that we've conducted, these are on the nearshore, shallow areas where the turtles have been found, that the turtles are quite healthy. that they are feeding normally, and that their mortality is a cute. all of those things are not normally associated with some sort of exposure and longer-term mortality. so, what we are finding at least a number of necropsies is that this appears to be somehow associated with white kitchen spent with some sort of trauma. and not toxicity? >> right. >> in the water. >> having said that we have actually not continue to rollout, continue to investigate what is going on there. and are some examples that do not fit into that category i just described, so i think the answer to question is will not rule out come and we are aggressively continue to look. >> thank you, you both. >> that you very much. senator nelson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. gentlemen, thank you for your public service. we had a failed decision-making apparatus. unified command to begin with did not react as hard as people were working. an