Oil Spill Threatens Gulf Seafood

Gulf Coast fishermen are hustling to harvest shrimp, oysters and fish before the environmental disaster gets any worse. For shrimp- and oyster-lovers, the message is keep on eating -- at least for now.
Seafood industry officials say it's too early to tell whether the summer catch will end up being a disaster, or merely a setback.
"Our brand has been damaged severely, but we still have significant fisheries operating," said Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. "Our biggest challenge is letting consumers know we still have 70 percent of our fisheries open. The seafood is safe and the fish and waters are being tested."
Two-thirds of the oysters eaten in the U.S. come from Gulf coast states. As of Wednesday, officials said the slick was nine miles from Pensacola, Fla., and moving toward the productive oyster beds of Apalachicola Bay, Fla.
Federal officials have closed more than one third of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing operations, mostly in the eastern side of the Mississippi River Delta. State wildlife officials also closed about 125 miles of Louisiana's coastal oyster beds as oil has polluted wetlands and shallow bays where these shellfish thrive.
For shrimpers, the good news is that the oil has stayed away from the larger fishing grounds east of the Mississippi toward Texas.
"The areas that are the largest and most productive have not been affected by the oil spill," said Roger J. Zimmerman, director of NOAA's Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Galveston, Texas. "We won't know the long-term effects on the fisheries until we do monitoring and assessment to tease out the effects of oil and the normal environmental affects."
Americans eat more than four pounds of shrimp per person each year, topping the list of favorite seafood. But only 7 percent comes from the Gulf of Mexico. The rest is imported from Southeast Asia and Ecuador, according to the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group.
"We like to think that wild caught shrimp from (the Gulf) are much better than pond-raised shrimp from Asia," said David Veal, head of the American Shrimp Processors Association in Biloxi, Miss. "If we were to stop the flow and clean it up, we might escape with minimum damage."
Still, there are growing concerns about the perception of restaurateurs and at-home cooks. Industry representatives say that it took nearly two years for U.S. consumers to return to Gulf seafood after Hurricane Katrina.
Already some seafood restaurants are saying no to Gulf shrimp, even though no contaminated seafood has turned up.
"They need to get it capped," said Harlon Pearce, chairman of the Louisiana seafood board, about the BP well. "Nobody can feel comfortable with an oil spill."
Eric Niiler is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.