'One Tree Hill' stars share their images of the Gulf Coast.
CW stars Sophia Bush and Austin Nichols spent June 21and 22 in Grand Isle and New Orleans, La., viewing the impact of the BP oil spill on the Gulf coast, its wildlife and its people.

Here, they share their startling photos and stories with Zap2it in the hopes of raising awareness and encouraging activism.

"This isn't about celebrities putting their face on the cause," Bush says. "We need to get together as people, because the numbers matter. We all have to write our congress. We all have to write our Senate. We all have to petition our president. The more of us that get involved in this and the longer that we clamor and scream and stand up for our rights, the faster the change will happen."

"I'm enraged. I'm not even mad anymore. Coming down here I was angry, and leaving this place tomorrow, I am enraged and shocked that any of what's going on down here is legal in the first place."
-- Sophia Bush

"We're down on Grand Isle, and there are these giant piles on the beach that are covered in sand. And we asked what was under the sand on these piles -- because it can't just be piles of sand -- and they said 'We're not allowed to talk about it. We can't talk about it.'"
-- Sophia Bush

Austin Nichols: "There's a section of beach that's blocked off by this giant orange boom, and they're saying that on the other side of it is a crime scene. If we cross over it, then we are violating 14:63, which is criminal trespass. And they're calling it 'the hot zone,' and it's like -- is there an ebola contamination?"

Sophia Bush: "What I find interesting is that if a murder has been committed, you don't send the murderer in to the crime scene to clean the blood up off the floor, so if this is a crime scene, why is B.P. in there running the show? Why can't the people who live here and the people who are affected get in and help?"

"I asked why we couldn't go out there and work and take pictures, and the Sheriff said, 'Well, you know what's in the water, right?' And I said, 'The dispersant?' And he told me, 'Everybody out here is telling us that getting hit with that stuff is like getting hit with napalm.'"
-- Sophia Bush

Austin Nichols: "I've got these photos of this dumpster where they put these giant trash bags that they're supposed to fill with the oil and debris and whatever else. The workers have plastic bags --"

Sophia Bush: "Plastic bags that are six feet deep. They'd put one shovelful of sand in each of these giant trash bags -- sand that looks perfectly clean. We saw a lot of oil this weekend, and there was no oil in that sand."

AN: "They'd put one shovel of sand in each huge bag, then put the bags in a dumpster. We're thinking that they're going to say 'Oh, we've got ten thousand bags off of the beach,' and each bag isn't even close to full. It's bulls***."

"You will notice that the dumpster [that they're putting the bags of sand in] is outside the 'hot zone' (it's on our side of the beach booms) and there is NO ONE guarding it, thus they are not collecting hazardous material."
-- Sophia Bush

"Everyone is clamoring to volunteer. Everyone is saying we'll go out on the boats and we'll go on the beaches and we'll go pick up oil. BP has told everybody that you've got to go through a Hazmat certification course, which they're not offering, and unless you have a Hazmat suit and the training, you can't go out on the beach.

"We watched all the contracted workers that BP has hired -- none of whom would tell us what companies they work for, that BP has hired, because they're told that if they share that information they'll get fired -- we watched these guys walking around on the beaches wearing no protective gear other than plastic gloves and rain boots. They've been told that if they're photographed wearing respirators they'll be fired."
-- Sophia Bush

"We went down to the beach yesterday, and the Sheriff, as soon as we started to cross the boom, pulled up on ATVs with lights and sirens blaring and told us that we were not allowed into the -- and I quote -- 'hot zone', and that if we crossed the barriers we would be arrested, and if they forcibly removed us they would have to decontaminate us."
-- Sophia Bush

"Really, more than anything, it's the locals whose ways of life have been stolen from them -- they need money now. All of the fisherman, whose livelihood is the ocean, and their families have told us that within the next few days, they'll have completely run out of money. They have no way to feed their families, to buy groceries, to pay their electricity bills, phone bills, mortgages."
-- Sophia Bush

"We went to an island that's a bird sanctuary, and there are barrier booms around it that are completely ineffective. You can see the oil just spilling over it. The barrier booms that BP has assured us are keeping wildlife safe -- they do nothing."
-- Austin Nichols

"We met this great guy, Christian Delano [pictured], who taught us a lot. The message from the fisherman is, 'Hey, we're here. We have boats. Let us go out and clean up.' Christian has lived in Grand Isle all his life, and he went to the leaders there and asked how he could help, and the answer from BP is 'No, that's our oil, stay out of it.'"
-- Austin Nichols

"We are murdering the planet, and you can call me a hippie for saying that, but it's true."
-- Sophia Bush

"All of this is a reminder of the price way pay for being dependent on dirty energy. "
-- Austin Nichols

"We had a lawyer talking to us about this yesterday. Part of the way BP's liability is calculated is by the counted number of gallons that spill, the counted number of dead birds, sea turtles, mammals, everything. So every animal that dies that they prevent us from counting and finding out about is less money that they have to pay out."
-- Sophia Bush

"We went to where Jean Baptiste's old fort was, there's like a huge slick of oil all over the water, and there were dolphins breaching right by our boat right there. It's so sad because there's no way to communicate to these animals to move and go the other way."
-- Austin Nichols

"We have to make major and swift changes as a nation in the way that we consume energy because we can't continue to live like this.
-- Sophia Bush
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