With the massive oil slick spreading up the Gulf Coast shoreline, some 5,000 barrels are set to impact the coast. Louisiana’s commercial fishing industry, which sells $1.8 billion of product each year, or 40-percent of the seafood caught or farmed in the lower 48 states and consumed domestically, is in peril. While the oil is just now lapping against shore, impact from the oil spill is already being felt by charter boat captains, oystermen and shrimpers along the Gulf Coast,…
Louisiana opened a special shrimp season last week in order to allow shrimpers to try to harvest what’s salvageable before the BP oil spill washes ashore. Analysts say, however, that shrimp supplies will still be hit hard this summer. Reports say that any seafood from the Gulf Coast — shrimp, oysters, grouper, snapper, etc – were in jeopardy. The last regular supply of oysters were harvested Sunday, as farmers dug their shellfish up as quickly and frantically as they could…