The U.S. Gulf Coast seafood industry is hitting the ground in an effort to stave off misinformation regarding “tainted” fish in the wake of late April’s catastrophic oil spill.
Representatives of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board (LSPMB) and the Gulf Oyster Industry Council (GOIC) were in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday asking lawmakers to help them spread the word that Gulf seafood is safe to eat.
“The [Louisiana] Department of Health and Hospitals, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and other state agencies have closed areas that might be impacted by the spill as a precaution,” said LSPMB Chairman Harlon Pearce, “so consumers can be confident that Louisiana seafood … has not been affected by the spill.”
The American Shrimp Processors Association (ASPA) emphasized on Wednesday that the oil spill will not eliminate the availability of fresh, high-quality shrimp.
“The spill may have an impact on the supply of some seafood, but we are still producing and are going to continue producing quality shrimp,” said ASPA Executive Director David Veal.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has closed the waters most affected by the oil spill — stretching from the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle — to commercial fishing through early next week. But Veal pointed out that the closed area represents only one-third of Gulf shrimp production.
“Hopefully the only impact on the industry will be a slight delay in the opening of the brown shrimp season,” he said.
Gulf fishermen catch around 180 million pounds of shrimp annually, which accounts for only 10 percent of the U.S. shrimp supply, with imported product from Asia and Latin America representing the remaining 90 percent.
In a letter to NOAA and the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, the Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA), which presents shrimp fishermen and processors from Texas to the Carolinas, expressed concern that the dispersants BP is using to break up the oil slick is harming the marine environment.
“The Southern Shrimp Alliance is worried about the damages from the oil and additional impact of dispersants on the marine environment — from plankton and shrimp larvae to protected marine mammals, seabirds and endangered species of sea turtles,” said SSA Executive Director John Williams. “The shrimp industry is already facing closures that prevent us from working due to the oil spill. While we are extremely grateful to the federal agencies for all they are doing, we cannot afford further damage from the unintended effects of the clean-up efforts.”
On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that a boat carrying a 100-ton concrete-and-steel contraption designed to siphon off the oil has arrived at the site of the blown-out well, which is spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf per day. Another boat with a crane will lower the box to the seafloor later today.
The spill began on 20 April when BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, which is located 50 miles off the southeast coast of Louisiana, caught fire and collapsed the next day.
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