A poor appetite for gulf seafood
Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times
When news first hit of the massive oil blowout 50 miles southeast of here, Arnesen filled her freezer with shrimp. She has no intention of eating fresh seafood until she stops hearing from her fellow fishermen about blobs of oil on the sea bottom and tiny droplets of dispersed hydrocarbons in the water.
"I'm not going to sell somebody something I wouldn't feed my own kids, and we're not eating it," Arnesen said. "They can eat burgers for awhile."
The $272-million seafood industry that is as much a part of Louisiana as Mardi Gras is struggling to regain traction in a market that is showing little appetite for local seafood after BP's busted well gushed an estimated 4.1 million barrels into the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite the reopening of most gulf waters to commercial fishing, many fishermen say that early catches of shrimp and oysters have been meager, prompting fears that the oil spill generation may have been largely wiped out. Just as big a challenge, though, has been getting the troubled fishing industry back up and running.
The opening of white shrimp season Aug. 16, much anticipated after months of fishing closures, was almost a nonevent — the majority of shrimp boat owners were still working on the BP cleanup, many earning $1,500 a day or more, which at today's depressed shrimp prices can be more lucrative than fishing.
Local seafood buyers bereft of supply are closing their docks to keep losses from multiplying, leaving shrimpers who couldn't get hired by BP with few outlets to sell their catch. Meanwhile, national frozen fish buyers are driving down prices, threatening to eviscerate the gulf seafood industry's future markets by signing new contracts for Asian and Latin American shrimp.
"Definitely, the image of seafood has been damaged badly," said Ewell Smith of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. "We had 24-hour, real time video of a BP gusher coming up from the bottom of the gulf. That image, along with the oiled pelicans, has just been sealed in the minds of consumers. It will take a long time to undo that."
articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/26/nation/la-na-0827-gulf-seafood-20100827
Aug. 26, 2010