

On the shores of southern Alabama, there was a disaster, and a miracle: The worst oil since the Deepwater Horizon blowout washed ashore late Saturday, even as a sea turtle swam through the mess and laid a new nest on shore.

It got worse: Though motorized vehicles are not supposed to be used in cleanup in the area used by the turtles, the beach was soon swarming with all-terrain vehicles and heavy equipment. One of the vehicles ran over the nest, said Mike Reynolds of Share the Beach, whose volunteers patrol the 47 miles of sandy beach west of the Florida border to find and protect new turtle nests.

Then came the good news: Volunteers were able to find the nest, safely dig up the 127 new ping-pong-ball-sized eggs and rebury them in a safe location. The nest, which is the first to be laid in the area since the oil spill began, will be fenced off to protect the eggs until they hatch in about two months.

Alabama beaches were hit with waves of oil mousse mixed with sargasso seaweed up to five inches thick. "We had a mass of oil coming in, and it was everywhere," Reynolds said.

After intense cleanup efforts, only pancake-sized tar balls remain on the white sandy beaches around Gulf Shores and Orange Beach -- Alabama's premier coastal tourist areas -- but ribbons of oil remained in the water just offshore, witnesses said.

"Yesterday, the oil was terrible. Now, it's just light stuff everywhere," Reynolds said.

Five of the world's seven species of sea turtles make their home in the Gulf of Mexico, all of them threatened or endangered as their numbers have been decimated by fishing, coastal development and pollution. Their plight is detailed in a story here.

As of Saturday, 374 sea turtles affected by the oil spill have been collected by wildlife authorities, 315 of them dead. A total of 42 turtles were visibly oiled.