NEW ORLEANS — Oyster growers along the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast are facing special challenges as the deadline arrives Tuesday to file for compensation from short-term damage from the BP oil spill.
Already battered by a summer during which their fishing grounds closed and their oysters perished by the thousands, harvesters along the coast are now struggling to obtain accurate estimates of the damage to their oyster beds, says Mike Voisin, an oyster processor from Houma, La. Voisin sits on Gov. Bobby Jindal's Oyster Advisory Committee and the state Oyster Task Force.
Oyster beds were virtually untouched by encroaching oil from the BP spill, but suffered massive mortality from two freshwater diversions — openings along the Mississippi River that allowed fresh water from the river to flow into surrounding estuaries to push the oil away, he says.
Half of Louisiana's 390,000 acres of privately leased oyster beds are expected to die off in the next two years, Voisin says.
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