

A man poses with fish he caught while sport fishing off a pier in Grand Isle, Louisiana. (Getty Images)
Editor's Note: The sea has lost its lure for hundreds of men and women who make a living off the Gulf of Mexico. Many of them have been idled for months as the BP oil spill keeps thousands of square miles of ocean off-limits to fishing. Last week, a ban on one-third of those waters was lifted. Now, seafood industry officials and Louisiana's governor want the rest of the Gulf reopened. But as our Jim Acosta reports, a lot of fishermen are going to need a little incentive to get them back in the water. Watch ![]()
By Jim Acosta and Bonney Kapp
(CNN) – With the oil dissipating faster that expected, Louisiana seafood officials want BP to lure the state's fishermen back to the water.
Many of Louisiana's 12 thousand fishermen have gotten accustomed to serving as cleanup workers since the oil spill began, drawing paychecks from BP instead of from the Gulf of Mexico.
Ewell Smith, executive director of the state's Seafood Promotional and Marketing Board, is asking BP to offer a bonus to fishermen who return to their old jobs.
"It's a commonsense approach to put fishermen back to work to help mitigate claims against them," Smith said.
Under the state's proposed "Back to the Docks" program, BP would pay fishermen an additional 30 cents for every dollar of seafood they catch. Now that BP is closing in on killing the well, company spokesman Larry Thomas said the oil giant is considering Smith's proposal.
(CNN) – One hundred days after an oil well operated by BP ruptured in the Gulf of Mexico, and 13 days after crews finished capping the well to contain the previously-gushing crude, the company's incoming Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley says the worst may be over.
"I think - no guarantees - but I believe there will be no more oil flowing into the Gulf as of the 15th of July," Dudley told CNN's "American Morning" on Wednesday.
Dudley, who BP elevated Tuesday to replaced current Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward on October 1, said resolving the crisis is "the single-highest priority for BP going forward."
"The only way you can build a reputation is not just by words, but by action," Dudley said. "I picked up that people think that, well, once we cap this well, we're somehow going to pack up and disappear. That is certainly not the case. We've got a lot of cleanup to do. We've got claims facilities. We've got 35 of those around the Gulf coast.
"As of this morning, we wrote a quarter of a billion dollars in checks, for claims. There's still more to go. We know that. We haven't been perfect at this. But it's a deep, deep personal commitment from me for BP and the many people in the Gulf coast to make this right in America." Read more
Interactive: Not over yet: A story of many threads
The Gulf Coast oil disaster is made up of many facets: the lives, the numbers, the science, the economy, the wildlife and more. The worst U.S. spill began April 20, and the consequences could last decades. Explore some of the threads of this unfolding story. See full page interactive

Pakistani rescuers search for bodies in the wreckage of a plane crash on the outskirts of Islamabad on July 28, 2010. (Getty Images)
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) – No one survived the crash of a Pakistani passenger plane that went down in the outskirts of the capital Islamabad Wednesday morning with 152 people on board, officials said.
Rescuers worked in heavy rains to recover bodies from the wreckage, as officials launched an investigation to determine why the accident occurred.
Crews combing through the debris have recovered a so-called "black box" - which is actually orange - that is either the craft's flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder, according to Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Kingdom. Information from the recorder will help authorities determine the cause of the tragedy.
Initially, Pakistani Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira and Interior Minister Rehman Malik reported survivors in the crash. Kaira said there were eight survivors and Malik said there were six. Full story
(CNN) – It's hard not to notice how prevalent pornography is on the Internet. There are 420 million Internet porn pages, 4.2 million porn Web sites and 68 million search engine requests for porn each day. Sociologist Gail Dines is the author of "Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality." She joined us on Wednesday's American Morning to discuss how Internet porn may be changing the way people think about their own sexuality. Watch ![]()

