Video: Seafood dealer says load of crabs “contaminated with oil”
In addition to claims that their crab catch was contaminated from oil pollution, fishers claim that government scientists failed to collect samples of their catch. More via WALB-TV:
Fishermen in coastal Louisiana say hundreds of crabs caught near Saint Bernard Parish were full of oil, rendering their day’s catch useless. Now they’re calling for testing to see if those crabs were contaminated from BP oil.
Tuesday was supposed to be a very productive day for B&K Crabbing, but when one of the fishermen brought his catch back to the dock, seafood dealer Kevin Heier says he knew something wasn’t right.
“We dumped them in ice water, picked the box up, dumped them on the table, and the smell like to knocked us down,” Heier said. “[We] emptied the box of crabs and the water that was coming off the crabs on the table was just like a sheen.”
Heier believes the crabs were contaminated with oil.
“It’s something I’ve never seen before in my life,” Heier said. “I was in total shock. Mr. Bruce, he’s 70 years old, he’s been doing this for 60 years, something he’s never seen either.”
Dealers Bruce Guerra and Heier immediately realized no one would want to buy their catch. Their next move was trying to contact Wildlife and Fisheries.
“We got a biologist that was supposed to come here, about an hour passed and he never showed up,” Heier said. “So we called the biologist and said ‘What happened?’ and he said ‘My superior stopped me from coming.’”
More than 24 hours later, Heier says the catch can’t be tested because the crabs have all died. Crabbers will have to return and try for another harvest from the same area. Ideally, some of the crabs will live long enough to serve as viable samples.
“We’ve got to get to the bottom line and find out the root cause of this, what’s the problem,” Heier said. “It’s like we can’t get help from nobody.”
Guerra added, “It ain’t over with. Just like BP, Alaska, 17 years this went on. They’re here four and a half months and want to pull out, you know, like nothing’s wrong.”
The oil spill isn’t finished, and it’s effects will continue for years. The image below shows one of three fish kills reported from Plaquemines Parish. At first glance, the image looks like an old road, but “it’s a Louisiana waterway, [and] its surface [is] completely covered with dead sea life — a mishmash of species of fish, crabs, stingray and eel.” Some claim that the fish kill isn’t connected to the oil spill, but fishers argue that these type of fish kills are unprecedented.
Video: Thousands More Dead Fish Turn Up in La. Waters
