MOBILE, Ala. -- A heightened sense of environmental awareness grows day by day in Alabama with

oil creeping toward the coast

and many worried that sea life may already be affected, marine researchers said Saturday, as warnings rose in Louisiana that the gooey slick in marshes there could prove impossible to clean.

For the past week, dead catfish have washed ashore around Mobile Bay, but marine researchers said Saturday that the kill is most likely unrelated to the spill.

More than 50 miles of Louisiana's delicate shoreline already have been soiled by the massive slick unleashed after the Deepwater Horizon rig burned and sank last month, killing 11. Officials fear oil eventually could invade wetlands and beaches from Texas to Florida.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, head of the federal effort to contain and clean up the spill, called oil in the marshes a "worst-case scenario."

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Also on Saturday, BP PLC told federal regulators it plans to stick with the main chemical dispersant it's been spraying in the open Gulf to break up oil before it reaches the surface. The Environmental Protection Agency had directed the company to look for less toxic alternatives. But BP said in a letter to the EPA that Corexit 9500, one of the chief agents used, "remains the best option for subsea application."

In Florida, there was a push to allay fears, as a powerful current shifted that had been forecast to bring oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill to the Florida Keys.

Officials said the so-called "loop current" expected to send the oil to Florida had moved west. That could delay the arrival of tar balls and other forms of oil to the Keys.

"Are we out of the woods? No. The loop current does eventually come into the Florida Straits and this way," said Sean Morton, superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which is overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The loop current is a ribbon of warm water that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and wraps around Florida. Like the oil, the loop's position is constantly changing based on winds and currents, meaning predictions on its trajectory are ever-fluctuating.

Debbie Harkins, who lives along Mobile Bay in Coden, called the incident command center in Mobile to report hundreds of dead catfish that had floated onto the beach outside her home. The fish had been washing ashore for days, she said, and Saturday seemed the worst.

She worried that oil in the water may have reached Alabama waters, or that dispersants had killed the fish.

But U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents said that the cause was likely a virus.

John Mareska, a biologist with the Marine Resources Division of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said catfish may continue to wash ashore. Though researchers have yet to determine the cause of the recent kill, Mareska suspected that it was comparable to a virus that killed catfish 12 years ago.

On the fish found from Fowl River to Bayou La Batre and from Bon Secour Bay to Fort Morgan, officials have yet to find evidence of oil either on the exterior of the fish or in the stomachs, Mareska said. If dispersants were to have affected sea life near Alabama, he said, more species than catfish would likely have been affected.

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Mareska said that since the spill he has received more calls from people concerned about fish, turtles and birds.

Though response teams have not linked wildlife injuries in Alabama to the oil spill, Mareska said the heightened awareness "is actually a good thing."

For years after Hurricane Katrina, people would blame unusual events in the waters on the storm, said Joe Steadman, as he worked on a pier in Coden, just a few hundred feet away from oil boom.

"Now it's going to be oil," he said.

A lawyer, Steadman recited the Latin phrase, "post hoc ergo propter hoc," referring to a logical fallacy translated as, "after this, therefore because of this."

But he was quick to point out that he believed BP should be held responsible.

"I'd rather see dead catfish on the beach than oil," he said.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)