Three rows of boom laid in front of the marshes, which lie 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of the port of Venice and accessible only by boat, appeared to serve little purpose, and if anything were corralling the oil up against the wetlands' plants, not keeping it away.

Coastal scientist Angelina Freeman dipped an amber-colored jar into the oily water to take a sample.

An estimated 29.5 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico in the five weeks since a ruptured pipe a mile below the surface began gushing crude after an explosion on board BP's Deepwater Horizon toppled the offshore rig, killing 11 workers and sending the platform sinking to the sea floor.

In the emotionless way of a scientist, Freeman described the oil inside the jar -- "very black, sort of chocolate-syrupy, really thick" -- but also uttered a few "wows" of disbelief.

She put the sample of thick goo into a box containing other sample jars, each filled with water that she had collected at several different points between Venice Marina and Pass a Loutre, leaning over the side of Shane Mayfield's powerboat and dipping her rubber-gloved hand into the water.

Freeman was distressed by what she saw, by the heavy smell of oil, by the sight of men in hazmat suits skimming thick oil off the surface of the water.

She was upset at seeing no sign of life at Pass a Loutre, a wildlife management area, and that the booms laid to protect the marshes had failed miserably.

"It's upsetting that the oil is inside the boom. It seems to be trapped inside the wetlands, where tidal flushing could help take it off the marshes," said Freeman, who works for the Environmental Defense Fund.

To get to Pass a Loutre, Mayfield's boat cut through the waters of the Mississippi delta and through small passes bordered by dense patches of cane.

"The vegetation was vibrant and it was alive with wildlife - birds were singing, fish were jumping. We saw mullets jumping, pelicans and terns and egrets flying overhead," Freeman said of the ride.

"But here, it's nothing. It's almost dead here."

A lone bird perched near a forlorn lighthouse about 100 meters (yards) from where row upon row of boom had been laid to try to protect the marshlands uttered a squawk.

"These marshes are extremely important in Louisiana," Freeman said.

"They are the nursing ground for fish and the nesting ground for birds. The marshes protect internal lands from storm damage. They reduce some of the waves from things like hurricanes and act as a filtration system for water by slowing the current and allowing sediment to fall off," she said.

Louisiana's wetlands make up some 40 percent of all the marshlands in the United States.

Oil in the marshes can suffocate plants and animals or poison them with the toxic chemicals found in hydrocarbons.

That was likely to happen at Pass a Loutre, where it looked impossible to get the oil out of the cane.

"If the roseau cane do end up dying, they have a really intricate root mass and if that goes they won't hold in the sediment any more. That can really enhance erosion. And we are already having a serious problem with erosion," said Freeman.

Freeman dipped another jar into water closer to the lighthouse, which once stood in the midst of marshland flora but was left isolated after the passage of hurricane Katrina in 2005 with its deadly winds and rain.

When she pulled out her sample jar there, it contained clumps of reddish oil, probably "the signature of dispersant oil," she said.

British oil giant BP has sprayed hundreds of thousands of gallons of dispersant on the surface and tens of thousands of gallons underwater to try to mitigate the massive spill caused by the accident on its Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20.

The dispersant, a low-level hazardous chemical, is meant to break down the oil so that, over time, the slick is reduced to smaller particles that biodegrade instead of being left as chunky, thick globs that can choke both wildlife and vegetation.

Another peril facing the marshes was the approach of hurricane season, which begins next week and is expected to bring more than a dozen powerful storms this year.

A hurricane could push the oil in the Gulf into wetlands far upstream on the Mississippi, where teeming wildlife belie the tragedy being played out a half-hour boat ride away at Pass a Loutre and in the waters of the Gulf.

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