A year after a an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig created a devastating oil spill in the region, how are fishing communities in the Gulf of Mexico dealing with the disaster? The BBC's Robyn Bresnahan visited the area to speak with people whose livelihood has been affected by the spill and the aftermath. She's witnessed everything from dead oysters to a resident so determined to increase awareness she walked to Washington D.C. from New Orleans on foot. Today we hear more from Bresnahan about her experiences in the Gulf. 

BP has successfully installed and closed a 75-ton cap atop the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico and for the first time in 85 days, oil has stopped flowing into the ocean. While this may come as a huge relief to many whose lives and livelihoods depend on the Gulf waters, some experts estimate that up to 184 million gallons of oil may have already contaminated the sea. (For a sense of scale, imagine one of the world's largest super-massive cruise ships filled up to the brim with sticky crude oil.  Now imagine another one, the exact same size, also filled to the brim with oil. That's roughly 150 million gallons.)

For 57 days, oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, following an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. That's 57 days of trying to determine what the leak looks like, how big it is, who it's affecting and where the oil has hit land. In other words: 57 days to get pretty creative.

Jeff Warren is a student and fellow at the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT. He's working on mapping the Gulf leak using digital cameras tied to balloons and kites. Here are some of the photos Warren and his colleagues have taken, using cheap digital cameras, kites, garbage bags, and tanks of helium.

"You take each image and you stretch it on a map and then every pixel of the location is a place in the real world," says Warren.

Lauren Craig is a master's student at Tulane and a photo volunteer. She's one of the people attaching a camera to a balloon and taking thousands upon thousands of photos.

After the jump, a short video by Jeff Warren in which he describes the project.