Louisiana Reopens Some Fishing Areas After FDA Tests
July 30, 2010, 2:57 AM EDTBy Stuart Biggs and Jeran Wittenstein
(Adds BP preparing to pump mud into damaged well in third paragraph. For more on the oil spill, see {SPILL <GO>}.)
July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Louisiana reopened some commercial fishing areas that were closed due to BP Plc’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to an e-mailed statement from the office of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries reopened areas for finfish and shrimp east of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Tammany, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes yesterday, the statement said. Tests by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that fish in the areas were safe for eating.
The reopening of fishing grounds comes after BP capped the well on July 15, preventing as much as 60,000 barrels of oil a day from gushing into the ocean. The company is preparing to pump mud into the well and may seal it with cement, a process which could begin this weekend, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said at a press conference in New Orleans yesterday.
“This is great news for our fishermen and seafood, processors who have been sidelined because of the oil spill,” Jindal said in the statement. “While these reopenings are a positive step, we continue to urge the FDA to test samples from the waters that remain closed so commercial fishermen across our coast can get back on the water.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service closed as much as 37 percent of the Gulf of Mexico to commercial fishing following the spill, which began when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, leased by BP from Transocean Ltd., exploded and caught fire on April 20.
Sealing the Well
Fishing has been banned in 57,539 square miles (149,026 square kilometers) or 24 percent of the Gulf’s U.S. waters, the Fisheries Service said on July 22, the day about a third of previously closed areas were reopened.
BP still needs to confirm the damaged well is plugged by intercepting it at the bottom and inserting additional cement as needed, Allen said yesterday. Lines that will inject mud into the well from the top also need to be connected securely before the sealing process can begin, he said.
Talks with officials in Louisiana, the state hardest hit, began yesterday on redirecting cleanup efforts once the spill ends and no more oil can be skimmed from the surface, Allen said. Louisiana’s parish presidents will be consulted on the use of idled fishing boats for the recovery of booms laid to prevent oil from entering marshes and bays, he said.
According to the government, 360 miles (579 kilometers) of Louisiana’s shores were polluted by oil as of yesterday, of the total 625 miles of affected coastline.
The Gulf of Mexico’s commercial fish and shellfish harvest was about 1.3 billion pounds (589,670 metric tons) worth $661 million in 2008, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Gulf supplied about 73 percent of shrimp in the U.S., or 188.8 million pounds worth $367 million that year.
Louisiana is the Gulf shrimp leader with 89.3 million pounds harvested, just below half the Gulf total, followed by Texas, Alabama, the west coast of Florida and Mississippi.
--With assistance by Jim Polson in New York. Editors: Alex Devine, John Viljoen.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jeran Wittenstein at jwittenstei1@bloomberg.net; Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at sbiggs3@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net.
