BATON ROUGE — State Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham said Thursday that BP is refusing to bankroll a long-term seafood-testing and marketing program to help commercial fishermen and processors overcome the impact of the oil disaster.
“They want to fund a short-term study and that’s just not acceptable,” Barham told the Wildlife and Fisheries Commission during its regular monthly meeting. “We’re not going to agree to something like that.”
Barham also argued that Exxon ponied up enough cash in 1989 for a long-term study following the Valdez oil spill — and there were still unexpected losses to fisheries.
For example, Prince William Sound has lost its herring fishery and the viability of salmon is questionable, even today, he said, because fish eggs came into contact with residual oil.
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