It is not an easy task to skim an enormous blob of oil off a moving fluid surface – but persistent crews armed with equipment with super hero names like “The Belt Skimmer” “Rope Mop” and “Sweep Boom” are doing everything they can to get a handle on the situation.

Today, our Fox News crew hopped on board an Oil Skimming Recovery Vessel known as an “O.S.R.V.” in Cape May, New Jersey to see how oil skimming is done.

When you think about skimming oil out of the water, you might think it’s like skimming leaves out of a backyard pool and you’s be right, except it’s a lot more complicated, messy and expensive. The vessel we went out on today is called the Lynne Frink. A 110-foot vessel owned and operated by National Response Corporation, which specializes in on shore and marine emergency response.

While on our ride-along, John Hielscher with the N-R-C told us that oil skimming is usually about 20-45% effective in a worst case scenario, and can be 60-80% effective when conditions are ideal.

There are a couple of methods crews use to clean up an oil mess like the one in the Gulf.

The first is a “Belt Skimmer” that is a secondary vessel that crews lower down into the water like a life raft, which picks up and sucks the oily water through a device that looks like a conveyor belt. The machine then shoots the water through a huge hose and into a container on board.

The other way this crew cleans up an oil slick is with the “Rope Mop” system – which looks like something you would see inside a drive-through car wash.

It’s a big line of ropes that dips down into the water, rotates around to grab the oil, then is pulled out and wrung out. The thick goo is then pumped into a tank on board. If these two methods don’t work, then it’s time to pull out the ocean oil containment boom and get the oil secured into one area so it will stop spreading.

This is the material that looks like a bunch of yellow life rafts sewn together. The Lynne Frink has a massive spool that has 25-hundred feet of oil containment boom that is unfurled into the water by using a 2nd boat because it’s so heavy.

After the oil is pulled in, crews can burn it off, skim it, or move it to another area. There is no telling what the price tag on all the clean up efforts will be along the Gulf Coast– but just to give you an idea of what it costs to run ONE oil skimming vessel – it’s 9,700 dollars for a 12 hour shift, and around 3,000 dollars for a tank of fuel. Rudimentary and pricey, but the crew on this boat says they are confident these methods will help do the job.