NEW ORLEANS, La. -The Florida coast awaiting disaster…Photo courtesy Quantum Physics via Flickr- The giant Gulf of Mexico oil slick was closing in on the pristine Florida coast on Wednesday, as deep-sea robotic submarines hit a new snag in BP’s latest bid to contain the spill.

Forecasters said it was virtually certain Florida’s panhandle, a major draw for tourists from around the world, would be hit by the spill this week.

A Florida official told AFP the latest official projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show the slick to be about seven miles off the state’s shores. “Within the next 72 hours, it should affect our coast,” the official with Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection said Wednesday, asking not to be named.

Florida would be the fourth state hit by the oil since an April 20 explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon rig, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers. The BP-operated rig sank two days later. More than 125 miles of Louisiana coast has since been contaminated by the oil, amid fears for the region’s already endangered wildlife.

With the ribbons of oil spreading, U.S. officials have extended new fishing restrictions, with about one-third of the Gulf of Mexico now off limits. NOAA said the ban was expanded “to capture portions of the slick moving into waters off eastern Alabama and the western tip of the Florida panhandle.”

Federal officials also confirmed that emulsified oil was found on Petit Bois Island, in Mississippi, while tar balls and sheen were spotted 10 miles south of Fort Morgan, Ala. All oyster beds and beaches around Dauphin Island, Ala., were closed by state authorities Tuesday as the oil sheen approached.

Tuesday’s official start of the hurricane season has worsened the outlook for Gulf residents, amid warnings the 2010 storm season will be more than active than usual, with up to 14 hurricanes.

BP is battling to contain the six-week spill, now the worst in U.S. history, with robotic submarines working a mile down on the seabed to cut off the fractured pipe.

But they hit a snag Wednesday when a saw got stuck while trying to make a second cut through the riser pipe, officials said. The diamond wire saw being used to cleanly cut off the ruptured riser pipe at the top of a failed blow-out preventer “has become stuck,” Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen told reporters. “Anybody that’s ever used a saw knows every once in a while it will bind up. That’s kind of what’s happening here,” Allen said.

A first cut was successfully made in the leaking pipe overnight, and Allen said he expected the saw would be extracted, or that a new saw would be sent down to the wrecked well head later Wednesday.

The next step will be to try to cap the end of the pipeline and then siphon the oil to a containment ship on surface.

But BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles acknowledged that until the cap is in place the flow of oil into the Gulf would likely increase by as much as 20 percent.

The U.S. government has estimated the flow of oil before the riser was cut away at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day — meaning at least 20 million gallons have already poured into the Gulf since April.

“I think if this works, we should capture the vast majority of the flow,” Suttles said on CNN Tuesday. “We can’t say it’ll capture all of it, because it’s not a tight mechanical seal, but if it functions well it should capture the vast majority of the flow.” 

BP is also drilling two relief wells intended to permanently stop the leak, but they won’t be done until August.

The disaster has badly damaged BP’s reputation, and its shares continued to fall slightly in London trade Wednesday a day after plunging 13 percent, wiping $17.6 billion dollars off its market value.

U.S. officials said the environmental disaster was now the subject of a criminal probe. In New Orleans, Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters his office “will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who has violated the law.” Holder said the criminal probe began “some weeks ago,” but declined to elaborate on what kind of charges could be brought and against whom.