Fishermen Catch Oil Covered Shrimp in Gulf
_Featured_, Toxicity Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Gulf shrimp contaminated by oil
According to Debra Nelson, her husband and two sons took their boat “Our Mother” off the coast of Louisiana to fish for royal red shrimp in waters recently reopened by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), approximately 40 miles away from where BP’s Deepwater Horizon spilled occurred.
The Nelsons said that close to $30,000 worth of seafood was lost because of the oil and tarballs which contaminated their catch.
“Something’s got to be done. They cut me out of my living. BP’s got to compensate for that,” said Johnny Nelson, captain of “Our Mother”.
The Nelsons reported the incident to officials. Representatives from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, the Coast Guard, and BP traveled to Bon Secour and met with the Nelsons on Sunday. The agencies collected samples of the shrimp and oil in order to determine the source of the contamination. The Nelson’s boat was sent to a decontamination station in Pascagoula, Missouri.
NOAA and the Department of Commerce are responsible for regulating the safety of the Gulf waters and its seafood. NOAA is now considering closing the waters that were reopened only a week ago, pending the results of further tests, saying it will commission expeditions to investigate contamination in the area. Since the Nelson family will have to wait for their boat to be cleaned and the rigging to be replaced, they will miss the royal red shrimp season and any profit that could have come from it. Fortunately, as some compensation, their boat will be one of the vessels NOAA will commission to collect further samples.
Watch a local NBC news report:
Sources:
http://www.local15tv.com/news/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
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