“Everything Is Dead”: Gulf Fisheries Collapse Nearly Two Years After BP Oil Spill

The Gulf seafood industry is in a free fall – particularly in Louisiana, which once produced nearly 40 percent of all seafood caught in the continental United States and $2.3 billion in revenue. Those glory days are are now just a memory, and they may never be recaptured. For the past two years, there’s been precious little Gulf seafood to bring to market – ever since BP’s blownout Macondo Well began spewing more than 200 million gallons of crude in April 2010 just 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The docks and marinas in hard-nosed fishing communities like Pointe-aux-Chenes and Venice, Louisiana, should be bustling this time of year, but today they are eerily quiet and undisturbed, like a world frozen in perpetual limbo – waiting, hoping, praying for the Gulf’s once-bountiful (even legendary) fisheries to produce again. Current reports from up and down the coast indicate the situation is dire indeed.

The oysters have been wiped out. The harvest for 2010 was the worst in more than four decades. And there’s been little improvement since then as oystermen continue to report catches down as much as 75 percent, from Yscloskey to Grand Isle. Some estimates put this year’s harvest at roughly 35 percent of the normal yield – and that’s if we’re lucky. Read More