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"Everything that happens to it affects me," said Patrick Kelly, who owns Captain Smiley Charter fishing tours in Little River and takes many of his 500 customers a year on fishing tours that take anglers 35 to 60 miles off the Carolinas' shore before meeting up with the warm, fast-flowing Gulf Stream current.

Kelly is among those watching the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, hoping none of the waste finds its way into the Gulf Stream, which flows around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast past South Carolina to Cape Hatteras, N.C., where it veers east.

Though most people say the chances are slim and that oil in the Gulf Stream is a worst-case scenario, the Gulf of Mexico rupture is still flowing and the longer it continues, the better the chances the East Coast could be affected.

"It's a wait-and-see-and-hope-it-doesn't-happen," said Myrtle Beach spokesman Mark Kruea. "The quicker they can act in the Gulf, the better off we will all be."

Officials will monitor the situation and prepare as best they can, Webster said.

"The good thing about it is, we would know it was coming because of the impacts along the East Coast getting here," Webster said.

The likely effect here would be tar-balls washing up along the Grand Strand coast, said Tom Swatzel with the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

"It looks like, from some of the information I've read, if some of that product were to make it around the (Florida) Keys and up the Atlantic seaboard, it would be in the form of these tar-balls and not liquid form. It's still a problem," Swatzel said. "Most people who are in the fishing business in South Carolina, whether it's recreational or commercial, their thoughts and prayers go to those in the Gulf. We wouldn't want those kinds of impacts in South Carolina."

Dana Beach, executive director of the Coastal Conservation League on the Grand Strand, said his group is not going south at this point, but is focusing on the policy implications for South Carolina, "especially since we have a Legislature that is encouraging drilling off our coast."

He said following the news of the Gulf spill means that "every day the magnitude of it dawns on us — it's a greater problem than we had imagined. It's inconceivably large.

"If we cannot figure this one out, we are in big trouble," he said.

Even if oil remnants don't wash ashore here, the impact of the spill will be far-reaching.

At Wayne Mershon's business, Kenyon Seafood, concerns have increased in the days since the spill, said the Murrells Inlet resident. He has not seen dramatic price increases yet, but if supply decreases, prices will climb, he said.

"It affects the snapper, the grouper and trickles all the way down to the bait because 90 percent of our bait comes out of the Gulf of Mexico," Mershon said. "It is an environmental disaster and I don't think the full impact of it will be felt for months to come, even if they corrected it today. It's a very bad situation. It's going to make seafood prices go up and if it goes up too much more people are going to quit eating it."