What's the point of the dispersants anyway?

Maybe I'm missing something here but I've been wondering for a few days now what is the point of using dispersants? Initally we were told that it would break up the oil and make it easier to skim it off the top. It doesn't seem that they recovered much of it that way. And the chemicals are much more toxic than the oil itself. As far as I can tell, dispersants don't do much of anything but make the oil less visible.

They didn't stop the oil from spreading, instead the oil sank out of sight, under the water where it can't be easily tracked. It certainly didn't stop it from washing up on the beach. And now that oil/dispersant stew is many times more toxic than pure crude would be, endangering the clean-up crews even more. It looks to me like its main value is in hiding the true amount of oil being spewed out of the gusher. In other words, its more of a PR tool than a clean-up aid. Wondering why its use was ever authorized.

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