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Behind the iconic "Hand of Noah" statue in downtown Silver Spring, nearly a thousand people are on a mission: To help the Gulf of Mexico bounce back from the worst oil spill in history.

Employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, based in Silver Spring, have been working tirelessly — often 16 hours per day, 7 days a week — to map the flow of oil-contaminated water, alert commercial ships of clean water routes, set up ship-cleaning stations to prevent the spread of oil and deal with the catastrophic environmental impact of the BP oil spill.

"At first, it was every day for the foreseeable future," said Brian Julius, deputy director for the agency's Office of Response and Restoration.

"Folks were worn out," agreed David Holst, his chief of staff.

"It was a safety issue. You're always wondering, are people too tired even to drive home from this command post?" Julius said.

Although the administration is out of the worst of its crisis mode, employees continue to regularly rotate shifts in the gulf — a couple weeks here, a couple weeks there, with frequent breaks to prevent exhaustion. At the home base in Silver Spring, experts constantly are updating maps that chart the oil spill, telling commercial ships and the Coast Guard where they can safely travel and where the spill might reach this hurricane season.

The agency's Office of Response and Restoration normally has 120 employees, but when the oil spilled, they pulled experts from all across NOAA, bringing their numbers to 900. Even more people are working in conjunction with this office, although not exclusively. Julius said he does not know how much they have spent; the bill, which will be paid by BP, is running higher and higher.

"We're not built for an event that goes on this long of this size," Julius said.

But inside the four NOAA buildings, its employees seem to have adjusted to a rhythm. Scientists, economists and geolocation experts walk briskly down the halls with little time for pleasantries.

There's Troy Kitch, a communications specialist, who can be seen editing podcasts that break down the technical talk of the agency's work into layman's terms. There's Ben Evans, the lieutenant commander in the Office of Coast Survey, who pores over nautical charts, or maps, used by mariners to safely transit along the coast. And there's John Sokich, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service, who predicts the impacts that a harsh hurricane season could have on spreading tar balls. He works for the agency that BP calls when they want to know if the waves and wind will be smooth enough to attempt their capping operations, he said.

"Across NOAA, the term you keep hearing is that we've settled into a battle rhythm," Julius said. "... I don't think there was ever a point where we didn't know what to do. It was just how are we going to organize this response in a way that we can get everything done?"

It's a cadence that extends to employees working in the gulf. Trevor Spradlin is a marine mammal biologist on his second tour in the gulf. He worked on coordination and outreach within the marine mammal and sea turtle unit, as well as conducted visual assessments of the bottlenose dolphins that live in the area.

Teams of marine biologists from the group are dissecting fresh animal carcasses to determine if any animals died from ingesting oil, he said. This will help NOAA estimate the long-term environmental impacts of the spill, he said.

"It's very analogous to doing a forensic investigation," he said in a phone call last week. "Very ‘CSI.'"

There's no silver lining to his work, he said, beyond recognizing the unstinting efforts of people all over the agency to minimize the impact of the spill.

"There's a huge group of people working tirelessly around the clock to do everything they can to preserve these species," he said. "... In Silver Spring, you've got this huge collection of really diverse talents, but it all has to come together to deal with a response like this. People walking by the building may not realize there are so many people [inside] who can put on different hats at the drop of a hat."