Widespread oyster deaths found on Louisiana reefs

[n2doc]

Published: Saturday, July 17, 2010, 11:00 AM

Surveys of coastal oyster grounds have discovered extensive deaths of the shellfish, further threatening an industry already in free-fall because of BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.


Matthew Hinton, The Times-Picayune archive
Oysters use salt water to make their shells and need it to keep their vital membranes working properly. Here, boat captain Sal Gagliano holds up open and dead oyster shells raked up in Bay Gardene on June 27.


The deaths are blamed on the opening of release valves on the Mississippi River in an attempt to use fresh water to flush oil out to sea. Giant diversion structures at Caernarvon and Davis Pond have been running since April 25 on the orders of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and local officials with the consent of the Army Corps of Engineers.

For the past 82 days, about 30,000 cubic feet of water per second has flowed into coastal Louisiana, enough to fill the Louisiana Superdome, home to the New Orleans Saints football team, nearly once an hour.

"What I saw does not look good," Patrick Banks, oyster manager for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, said in an e-mail. He said he found no evidence of oil on the reefs east of the Mississippi River, but he said they "looked to be fallow reef."

more

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/widespread_oyster_deaths_found.html

What a FUBAR this whole thing is....

[n2doc]

1. kick n/t

[SwampG8r]

2. not good

we often overlook all the work that starts in that oyster bed
the fish go there so there are jobs for fishermen and oystermen
they clean the water and keep levels of harmful substances out of the seas
when they are harvested jobs cleaning and packing shucking and canning
then a wholesaler sends them out in trucks
they go to restaurants like the one i work in
with the fish and shrimp they have purified the gulf for
and i cook them for money for my boss
who makes a profit and pays me a pretty decent wage
been like that since 1977 for me
if i dont have them i have no work
we will not know the extent of the cost of this disaster for years