'Whale' Supertanker to Skim Oil in Gulf*

A massive supertanker is heading for the Gulf, newly outfitted to skim oil out of the water—in theory. The boat, appropriately named A Whale, is 10 stories tall and 372 yards long, making it the largest ship to ever attempt an oil cleanup job. Its owner, Nobu Su, CEO of Taiwan Maritime Transport, says it's been outfitted to roll across the Gulf seeping up oil “like a lawn mower cutting the grass.” But the procedure is completely untested.

Government and BP officials are “about as excited as you can be about something that you have no idea what it can do,” a spokesman for the disaster's Joint Information Center tells the Huffington Post. But Su is confident his tanker can pull in 15 million gallons of oily water a day, a huge boost over the total 28 million gallons that BP has collected over a really depressing number of days. (More Gulf oil spill stories.)