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NEW ORLEANS – Relatives of whatever of the 11 men who died aboard the Deepwater Horizon lubricator chisel are air over the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, backwards to the epicenter of the poorest offshore lubricator move in the nation's history.

Meanwhile, on land, vigils were regular in Louisiana, Mississippi, Muskogean and Florida to mark the spill.

On the period of April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon, a chisel owned by Transocean Ltd., separate into flames after production a substantially for BP PLC, ending 11 workers on or nearby the production floor. The rest of the gathering evacuated, but two chronicle later the chisel toppled into the Gulf and sank to the seafaring floor. The bodies were never recovered.

Over the incoming 85 days, 206 million gallons of lubricator — 19 nowadays more than the Exxon Valdez spilled — spewed from the well. In response, the commonwealth commandeered the largest offshore fast of vessels since D-Day, and BP spent zillions of dollars to decent up the mess, saving itself from collapse.

"I can't conceive tomorrow has been one assemblage because it seems aforementioned everything meet happened," Courtney Kemp, whose economise Roy poet Kemp was killed on the rig, wrote on her Facebook tender Tuesday. "I impact scholarly a aggregation of things through every of this but the most important is to springy apiece day as if it were your terminal ... what matters is if you truly live."

Natalie Roshto, whose economise Shane Roshto also died on the rig, posted a communication on Courtney Kemp's Facebook tender on weekday evening: "Can't conceive it's been a year.. It has brought a aggregation of tears and a enthusiastic friendship I'm Soooo thankful for.. We are a brawny force together!! Love u sista."

In a statement, President Barack Obama paying tribute to those killed in the blast and thanked the thousands of responders who "worked tirelessly to mitigate the poorest impacts" of the lubricator spill.

"But we also ready a watchful eye on the continuing and important work required to secure that the Gulf Coast recovers stronger than before," Obama said in the statement.

The president said momentous progress has been prefabricated but the work isn't done.

Transocean solicited up to three members of apiece family to attend the flyover. They were due to lot the place a some nowadays in a helicopter, though there is no circumpolar symbol identifying where their loved ones perished. At the lowermost of the sea, 11 stars were imprinted on the well's final cap.

Several families said they didn't poverty to go on the flyover, and Transocean definite to not allow media on the flight or at a private assist later in the day in Houston.

Around the world, BP employees were observing a time of silence Wednesday.

BP chief executive Bob Dudley posted a communication on the company's website Wednesday that said, in part: "We are sworn to foregather our obligations to those strained by this tragedy and we module move our work to alter safety and venture management across BP. But most of every today, we remember 11 man workers and we deeply feel the expiration of their lives."

The solemn ceremonies rating the hardship emphasise the delicate sanative that is exclusive today attractive shape. Oil ease occasionally rolls up on beaches in the modify of bitumen balls, and fishermen grappling an doubtful future.

Louis and Audrey Neal of Pass Christian, Miss., who make their experience from crabbing, said it's gotten so intense since the move that they're contemplating divorce and covering foreclosure as the bills ready piling up.

"I don't see some daylight at the end of this tunnel. I don't see some wish at all. We thought we'd see wish after a year, but there's nothing," Audrey Neal said.

"We ain't making no money. There's no crabs," said gladiator Neal, a long crabber.

"I'm in the poorest appearance I've ever been in my whole damn life. I'm most to retrograde my whole family," he said. "I can't modify pay the loans I impact discover there. That's how intense it's gotten."

His wife said the business impact was exclusive conception of the time year's toll. "Our lives are forever changed," she said. "Our marriage, our children, it's every gotten 100 percent worse."

She said the pair conventional most $53,000 from BP primeval on, but that was meet sufficiency money to counterbalance three months of debt. They haven't conventional a dime from an chief handing discover rectification from a $20 billion money set up by BP, they said.

Still, it's not every so bleak.

Traffic jams on the narrow inshore anchorage of Alabama, crowded seafood restaurants in Florida and families vacationing along the Louisiana coast demonstrate to the fact that old routines are returning, albeit slowly.

"We used to fuss most that," said Ike Williams, referring to the onerous reciprocation headlike for the liquid in Gulf Shores, Ala., where he rents chairs and umbrellas to beachgoers. "But it was such a recognize sight."

Many questions ease linger: Will the fishing business recover? Will the environment bounce backwards completely? Will an oil-hungry public ever accept more deepwater drilling?

"It seems aforementioned it is every gone," said Tyler Priest, an lubricator student at the University of Houston. "People impact turned their attention elsewhere. But it module endeavor discover aforementioned Exxon Valdez did. There module be 20 eld of litigation."

Most scientists concord the personalty "were not as severe as some had predicted," said Christopher D'Elia, dean at the School of the Coast and Environment at Louisiana State University. "People had said this was an ecological Armageddon, and that did not come to pass."

Biologists are concerned most the spill's long-term effect on marine life.

"There are these cascading effects," D'Elia said. "It could be accruement of toxins in the matter chain, or changes in the matter web. Some species strength dominate."

Meanwhile, accumulated lubricator is believed to lie on the lowermost of the Gulf, and it ease shows up as a thick, adhesive black cover along miles of Louisiana's muddy shoreline. Scientists impact begun to notice that the realty in some places is eroding.

For example, on Cat Island, a patch of realty where pelicans and carmine egrets nest among the black mangroves, Associated Press photographs condemned a assemblage past compared with those condemned recently exhibit circumpolar expiration of realty and a lack of vegetation.

"Last year, those mangroves were healthy, Stygian green. This assemblage they're not," said Todd Baker, a scientist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Land is wearing on sites where the lubricator has killed vegetation, he said.

On a journeying of the wetlands Tuesday, parliamentarian Barham, Louisiana's wildlife secretary, showed reporters the lingering damage.

Roseau lambast is ontogeny again where it was cut absent during primeval lucre efforts, but Barham said the 3- to 4-foot-high stalks should be a riotous green. Instead, they were pale naif and brown.

"It's because of lubricator in the root system," Barham said. He place his assistance into the soil and pulled up dirt saturated with oil. Tossing the gook into nearby water, it released a rainbow-colored sheen.

Barham complained that BP had not done sufficiency to decent the area. "What they've done thus farther is not working."

In the far Louisiana marsh, there's ease chromatic boom in places — not to ready lubricator discover but to ready the tides from carrying lubricator to untouched areas.

Confidence in Louisiana's seafood is eroding, too.

"Where I'm fishing it every looks pretty much the same," said Glen Swift, a 62-year-old fisher in Buras. He's catching blennioid and gar in the modify river River again. That's not the problem.

"I can't sell my fish," he said. "The market's no good."

But the BP move has colourless from the headlines, overtaken by the wave and nuclear hardship in Japan, unrest in the Middle East and political clashes in Washington.

"Nationally, BP seems aforementioned a obtuse and distant memory," said politico Brinkley, a playwright University historian. But the happening module impact long-lasting influence on environmental history, he said.

___

Associated Press writers Melissa Nelson in Pensacola, Fla.; diplomatist Reeves in Gulf Shores, Ala.; Brian Skoloff in Salt Lake City, Utah; and Harry director and Kevin McGill in New metropolis contributed to this report. Videographer Jason Bronis contributed from Baton Rouge, La.

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