From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. Bob Garfield is away this week.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

So, how do you describe the scale of an ongoing disaster?

If you were reporting this week on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the first thing you would have to do is convey the scope of the event.

And it's been a struggle because there are so many things to measure,

starting with, but not limited to, size.

Here's an image of the spill taken from space.

Gushing 42,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day,

creating a slick about the size of Rhode Island.

This slick is the size of Delaware.

There's no other way to put it.

A growing blob of oil.

Now the size of Jamaica menaces five coastal states.

Jackie Savitz, a senior scientist with Oceana,

and International Ocean Conservation Association,

says that describing the scale of the leak in geographical

terms or how it looks from outer space gives the public an incomplete understanding of the spill's

true dimension. It may paint a picture of an area on the surface of the ocean that's the size of

Delaware to the exclusion of all that area down below the

surface where lots of fish and other marine animals live who are also being exposed to the

contamination. It might be more telling to think of it in terms of volume like how many

Olympic-sized pools is that or how many stadiums would that be or what lake might that be equivalent to?

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