Gulf seafood's image tainted by spill

The chunks of brick and concrete wedged above the water next to Pete Gerica's fishing boat are the remnants of his last house.

It was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Its crumbled remains now serve as part of the levee he has built to protect his boats and his new house, only partly built, against the next storm.

But Mr. Gerica and thousands like him may have no way to protect themselves against the tempest of oil that is fouling the Gulf of Mexico and their way of life. That pain could go far beyond years of diminished catches.

"Our biggest hit in this is going to be the confidence people have in our product, long-term and short-term," said Mike Voisin, the owner of Houma, La.-based Motivatit Seafoods, whose family has farmed Louisiana oysters for eight generations. "Our brand, the brand of Louisiana seafood, the brand of Gulf seafood, is going to be hit substantially."

That brand had, until the spill, experienced some much-needed success. After years of effort, Louisiana's fishermen and shrimpers had convinced some consumers to specifically request Gulf seafood in restaurants and grocery stores, pressuring sellers not to serve imported food.

Now restaurants across the continent are striking Gulf seafood from their menus, orders are drying up and Internet rumours of oily seafood have sparked fears that override assurances from scientific testing agencies that Gulf products are safe. A recent study by the University of Minnesota found that fully 89 per cent of those surveyed are concerned about the spill's impact on food; nearly half won't touch Gulf seafood any more.

Eric Morgan, president of Morgan + Co., a New Orleans brand specialist, worries that the very taste of Gulf seafood will be fouled, in the same way that food can taste funny if someone asks whether it tastes fine.

"You're going to have these lingering pictures of oil and dead pelicans and shrimpers out of business. People are going to have that perception, and the taste is going to be affected. People's palates are going to be affected," Mr. Morgan said. "Haven't we been through enough down here?"

It certainly seems that way to Mr. Gerica, a third-generation fisherman. Early on a June morning, with the orange sun silhouetting the oak trees killed by Katrina, he heads out onto the water to face this new storm. He spends nearly eight hours stringing crab leg bait onto two lines of hooks - 180 in all. The next day, he is retrieving them. Sweat dripping from his brow, he tugs first one long white line from the sea, then the second.

He has not caught a single market-worthy fish. He has only caught six catfish, most of them little bigger than a cucumber. He tosses them back into the water.

"It's bad when you don't even catch catfish," he says.

It is one of the bitter ironies of the spill that Mr. Gerica and many others are still fishing. Fully two-thirds of the offshore fishery remains open. So many fishermen are crowding into the areas that haven't been closed that it's getting hard to catch any fish at all. At a nearby pass, 150 shrimping boats are squeezing into an area each night that normally sees 35.

But the most important question that will determine the future of fishermen like Mr. Gerica is what will become of their good name.

Gulf seafood used to enjoy an allure as a healthy, all-American, culturally important catch. The spill has struck at the core of that image, and the results have already been devastating. In markets like New York, restaurants have stripped "toxic" gulf seafood from their menus and demanded shrimp supplies from alternate locations like Ecuador and Panama.

"The larger restaurant groups seem to be taking a policy of don't buy it from there if there's any chance there might be some negative press on it," said Todd Harding, director of wholesale operations director at the Lobster Place, a New York seafood retailer and distributor.

And though oil has yet to reach much of the western Gulf, including the Texas shore, buyers of southern U.S. shrimp are staying away from the entire region.

"They consider the spill to be the entire gulf," Mr. Harding said. "They don't want to risk it."

It's not that the fish has gone bad. So much testing has gone on that Mr. Voisin jokes "there's not going to be any product left out there. They're going to take it all for samples." All of the tests have given Gulf seafood products a clean bill of health, a fact that President Barack Obama emphasized when he ate local catch on a recent visit. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has also urged BP PLC to pay nearly half a billion dollars to test and certify the region's seafood, saying a $2.4-billion (U.S.) industry hangs in the balance.

Mr. Morgan is urging seafood marketing boards to be proactive, admitting that some areas of the gulf are hurt - but stressing that much of the offshore remains open, its seafood stocks healthy.

"They should be out there putting some positive spin on the good things that still exist, the good things that haven't been tainted," he said.

Mr. Gerica says the possibility of long-term harm from the spill is what weighs most heavily on him. He has begun thinking about how he could make a living - perhaps by installing pools, work he currently does in the off season.

For now, though, he will keep fishing as long as there's a catch - and buyers.

"Everybody thinks I'm nuts. They say, 'How the hell you keep on smiling?' I say, 'Well, what are you going to do, cry?'" he says.