I am on the Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise, We are about 4.5 miles off from the spot where the Deepwater Horizon oil rig went down, which is about as close as it is possible to get, given the official exclusion zone.

It is a lot calmer now than the pictures that came out when oil was gushing out of BP's broken well at full flow, with giant columns of smoke rising from the burn fields and a flotilla of boats nearby.

I am told there are 26 other people on board, including two scientists affiliated with Texas A & M University at Galveston. This is a bit of a departure for Greenpeace.

For the scientists, it's a chance to get closer to an understanding of the fate of the oil that went into the Gulf. Is it being eaten by microbes in the depths, or did it simply sink to the ocean floor. A University of Georgia research team reported finding oil as thick as two inches in an underwater cancyon near the well.

I will be writing more on their efforts in the next few days. As for me, I am testing out the effectiveness of chewing slivers of ginger root as a remedy for sea sickness.

The Arctic Sunrise was designed and built as an ice breaker, and does not have a keel which makes for a rolling pitching ride. That might work well in Arctic waters. In the Gulf of Mexico, not so much!