Jordan Strauss/Getty Images for CNN

On Friday, Day 80 of the oil spill, much of the Gulf of Mexico still looked bruised and battered, just as it did the week before, and the month before that. So for a different perspective, CNN went scuba diving.

A new CNN correspondent, Amber Lyon, and a new CNN contributor, Philippe Cousteau, wore hazardous-materials suits as they swam in the contaminated waters and tried to convey the grimy oil residue they were seeing. The murky live shots from underneath the sea made more than a few viewers chuckle, but they were memorable, and sometimes that’s the point.

Every long-running news story mints new television stars, even if it is sometimes awkward to acknowledge that personal success can be born of a tragic event. Perhaps it’s a show business twist on not letting a crisis “go to waste.”

Last month, Mr. Cousteau was named an (unpaid) contributor to CNN.com’s blog about the oil spill, and he has been appearing regularly on the cable channel’s news programming as well. A grandson of the explorer Jacques Cousteau, he runs a nonprofit conservation group, and CNN gives him a bigger megaphone.

Also last month, NBC and its cable channel MSNBC hired Jeff Corwin, perhaps best known as an Animal Planet host, to beef up its environmental coverage of the oil spill. His title is “wildlife and science expert.”

Some other correspondents are also well on their way to becoming household names because of their time — now measured in months — spent along the gulf. Matt Gutman, a radio reporter for ABC News, is suddenly a high-profile reporter on television too, having filed nearly two dozen reports for ABC’s flagship “World News” since mid-May, according to The Tyndall Report, which tracks the content of evening newscasts.

“He most definitely does not have a face for radio, as the saying goes,” said Andrew Tyndall, who compiles the report.

Lizzie O’Leary of Bloomberg Television, Mark Strassmann and Kelly Cobiella of CBS, and Steve Harrigan and Kris Gutierrez of Fox News are also among the stand-outs in the spill coverage, according to network executives. Mr. Strassmann, for instance, has filed about 38 reports for the “CBS Evening News” since the spill started, according to The Tyndall Report, almost as many as he filed in the previous 12 months combined.