osoab
13th October 2011, 12:10 PM
Louisiana: Worst Shrimp Season in “Over 50 years” (http://blog.friendseat.com/decline-shrimp-louisiana/)
White shrimp season in Louisiana began in late August, and after two months Louisiana shrimpers are warning it’s the worst season in over a half century.
“It is bad not just in spots but all over southeastern Louisiana,” said Jules Nunez, calling it the worst season he had seen (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/us/gulf-shrimp-are-scarce-this-season.html?_r=3&hpw) since he began shrimping in 1950. Some fishermen said their catches were off by 80 percent or more.
New York Times writer Campbell Robertson (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/us/gulf-shrimp-are-scarce-this-season.html?_r=3&hpw) questions the eye-witness accounts of Louisiana shrimpers and blames the decimated shrimp population on the weather.
“Even if the reports of a dismal season prove true, any forensic work is complicated by the oddities of this year’s weather, with a severe drought in the states along the Gulf of Mexico interrupted by spring flooding on the Mississippi River that brought millions of gallons of fresh water into the marshes.”
Robertson goes on to suggest the worst season in these shrimpers’ lifetime may also be due to shrimp crop variations and quotes the least likely person on Earth to have credibility: a BP spokesman.
“A BP spokesman said in a statement that some preliminary sampling indicated that the 2011 white shrimp population was within the historical range of variability.”
A recent study by L.S.U. researchers (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/09/21/1109545108.full.pdf?with-ds=yes) warned that a minnow called the killifish abundant in Gulf marshes showed signs of cellular damage, problems associated with exposure to oil.
“They’re a fairly sensitive indicator relative to other species, which is good,” said Andrew Whitehead, (http://abcnews.go.com/US/gulf-shrimpers-reeling-bp-spill-blame/story?id=14627242) assistant professor of biology at Louisiana State University, and one of study’s researchers. “They act as a canary in the coal mine, if you will.”
Whitehead and his research team found the toxic chemicals (Corexit) from last year’s oil spill and remnants of the oil may be poisoning the marsh’s most abundant fish.
Whitehead commented that the phenomenon was alarmingly similar to the ecological fallout seen in the years after the 1989 Exxon-Valdez spill, in which populations of otters, ducks and herring were decimated.
“A lot of the early warning indicators for those species that had problems in Alaska, we’re seeing the exact same early warning indicators in our fish” – which means generations of gulf shrimp, oyster and snapper are at risk.
“When you look at the structure of the gills from these fish that were hit by oil,” Whitehead said, “their gills look pretty sick. And the gills are pretty important for enabling fish to live in these estuaries.”
An ABC news report points out that the threat isn’t just from the water, but also the wetlands. Sediment acts like a sponge soaking up toxic oil, destroying killifish embryos and causing others to hatch late or develop heart defects, said Whitehead.
“The sediment exposures are a knock over the head,” he said. “There’s very clear, compromised development in embryos that are exposed to the sediments.”
And while Robertson insists repeated studies have shown gulf seafood is safe to eat because industry representatives and government officials said so on their Web site (http://www.gulfsource.org/), a report by the Waterkeeper Alliance released this week (http://www.waterkeeper.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/20032) questions the health of Gulf seafood.
Massive Layoffs
“The shrimper, the restaurant owner, the wholesale seafood houses are all laying off people or shutting down,” attorney Daniel Becnel, Jr. told WWLTV, (http://www.wwltv.com/news/Seafood-Industry-Hurting-From-White-Shrimp-Shortage-Some-Blame-BP-130752448.html) a local news station in New Orleans.
WWLTV claims Becnel represents multiple clients still seeking claims from BP. “We think the corexit in the BP oil spill has killed most of the baby white shrimp and that’s why the fishermen are having such a hard, horrible time making a living,” said Becnel, who also added that Deepwater Horizon Claims Fund Administrator Ken Feinberg is re-evaluating certain shrimp claims.
White shrimp season in Louisiana began in late August, and after two months Louisiana shrimpers are warning it’s the worst season in over a half century.
“It is bad not just in spots but all over southeastern Louisiana,” said Jules Nunez, calling it the worst season he had seen (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/us/gulf-shrimp-are-scarce-this-season.html?_r=3&hpw) since he began shrimping in 1950. Some fishermen said their catches were off by 80 percent or more.
New York Times writer Campbell Robertson (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/us/gulf-shrimp-are-scarce-this-season.html?_r=3&hpw) questions the eye-witness accounts of Louisiana shrimpers and blames the decimated shrimp population on the weather.
“Even if the reports of a dismal season prove true, any forensic work is complicated by the oddities of this year’s weather, with a severe drought in the states along the Gulf of Mexico interrupted by spring flooding on the Mississippi River that brought millions of gallons of fresh water into the marshes.”
Robertson goes on to suggest the worst season in these shrimpers’ lifetime may also be due to shrimp crop variations and quotes the least likely person on Earth to have credibility: a BP spokesman.
“A BP spokesman said in a statement that some preliminary sampling indicated that the 2011 white shrimp population was within the historical range of variability.”
A recent study by L.S.U. researchers (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/09/21/1109545108.full.pdf?with-ds=yes) warned that a minnow called the killifish abundant in Gulf marshes showed signs of cellular damage, problems associated with exposure to oil.
“They’re a fairly sensitive indicator relative to other species, which is good,” said Andrew Whitehead, (http://abcnews.go.com/US/gulf-shrimpers-reeling-bp-spill-blame/story?id=14627242) assistant professor of biology at Louisiana State University, and one of study’s researchers. “They act as a canary in the coal mine, if you will.”
Whitehead and his research team found the toxic chemicals (Corexit) from last year’s oil spill and remnants of the oil may be poisoning the marsh’s most abundant fish.
Whitehead commented that the phenomenon was alarmingly similar to the ecological fallout seen in the years after the 1989 Exxon-Valdez spill, in which populations of otters, ducks and herring were decimated.
“A lot of the early warning indicators for those species that had problems in Alaska, we’re seeing the exact same early warning indicators in our fish” – which means generations of gulf shrimp, oyster and snapper are at risk.
“When you look at the structure of the gills from these fish that were hit by oil,” Whitehead said, “their gills look pretty sick. And the gills are pretty important for enabling fish to live in these estuaries.”
An ABC news report points out that the threat isn’t just from the water, but also the wetlands. Sediment acts like a sponge soaking up toxic oil, destroying killifish embryos and causing others to hatch late or develop heart defects, said Whitehead.
“The sediment exposures are a knock over the head,” he said. “There’s very clear, compromised development in embryos that are exposed to the sediments.”
And while Robertson insists repeated studies have shown gulf seafood is safe to eat because industry representatives and government officials said so on their Web site (http://www.gulfsource.org/), a report by the Waterkeeper Alliance released this week (http://www.waterkeeper.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/20032) questions the health of Gulf seafood.
Massive Layoffs
“The shrimper, the restaurant owner, the wholesale seafood houses are all laying off people or shutting down,” attorney Daniel Becnel, Jr. told WWLTV, (http://www.wwltv.com/news/Seafood-Industry-Hurting-From-White-Shrimp-Shortage-Some-Blame-BP-130752448.html) a local news station in New Orleans.
WWLTV claims Becnel represents multiple clients still seeking claims from BP. “We think the corexit in the BP oil spill has killed most of the baby white shrimp and that’s why the fishermen are having such a hard, horrible time making a living,” said Becnel, who also added that Deepwater Horizon Claims Fund Administrator Ken Feinberg is re-evaluating certain shrimp claims.