A Threat Creeping Toward the Pantry

by The New York Times
May 6, 2010
A Threat Creeping Toward the Pantry
By KIM SEVERSON
NEW ORLEANS — Margie Scheuermann, who has lived here for 78 years, went over her list as she waited in line Tuesday to buy local seafood at the Crescent City Farmers Market: a pair of soft-shell crabs, a pound of lump crab meat and five pounds of unpeeled white gulf shrimp.
“This could all be gone next week,” she said. “And if we don’t get fresh seafood, what are we going to do? You can’t cook.”
In good times and bad, New Orleans has always had a talent for living for the moment. So with oil from a gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico looming offshore, people here are buying and eating as much seafood as they can as fast as they can. At last Saturday’s farmers’ market, an entire load of 350 pounds of fresh shrimp, at $5 a pound, sold out in an hour.
At the P & J Oyster Company, one of the nation’s oldest oyster processors, a researcher at Louisiana State University who is studying the effect of oyster proteins on cancer cell growth called to order 25 pounds, just in case.
“You’ve got people who are scared and skeptical and want to wait it out, and people who are trying to load up,” said Al Sunseri, president of P & J.
He has not raised his prices yet, he said. But with some of his suppliers already out of stock, he knows it is just a matter of time.
There are still piles of oysters at classic restaurants here like Casamento’s, where $9 will get you a dozen shucked while you wait, but the crowds have been even more clamorous than usual.
The refrain was the same in South Mississippi, where families gathered for impromptu seafood boils, and along the Alabama shore, where seafood restaurants have rewritten menus to include seafood from other waters.
Along the Florida Panhandle, even outside the western edge that is closed to fishing at the moment, home cooks and commercial fishermen alike spent the week with one eye on the path of the oil spill and the other on the supply of grouper and shrimp.
But perhaps nowhere else in the gulf region is the fear of life without seafood as strong as it is in Louisiana. In the estuaries and marshes that make up most of the state’s 7,700 miles of tidal coastline, the mix of saltwater and freshwater creates a perfect breeding ground for sweet shrimp destined for étouffée; blue crabs whose meat is piled on seemingly every dish here; and oysters in all their cooked and raw forms.
“That marsh is really our pantry, and that’s why we are so afraid,” said Frank Brigtsen, the New Orleans chef who runs two restaurants that serve an abundance of Louisiana seafood.
Of all the gulf states, Louisiana also has the deepest financial stakes in keeping its fishing grounds healthy. Only about 20 percent of the seafood Americans eat is domestic, but the majority of that comes from either Alaska or Louisiana, said Albert Gaude, a fisheries agent with the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge. The shrimp industry alone, which produced 90 million pounds in 2008, brings in $1.3 billion a year.
So far, the portion of the Louisiana coast that is closed makes up only 23 percent of the fishing area, although it is on the exceptionally fertile east side of the Mississippi River. Only 6 of the state’s 30 oyster harvesting areas are temporarily off limits, just as a precaution.
But the talk here is about what happens when immeasurable gallons of oil and the estimated 100,000 gallons of dispersants BP plans to use to break it up work down into the food chain.
It is high spawning season now, and the water is filled with the larvae of fish, shrimp, oysters and crab. Dispersants and the oil droplets they leave behind can kill fish eggs, according to a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report cited in a study by ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit news organization.
Small-scale fishing in the gulf is already fragile, chipped away at by seafood farms, imports and hurricanes. Oyster beds full of oil, and shrimp with no plankton to eat because it has been poisoned by oil, could be more than the small operators can withstand.
“We’ll be feeling it for 20 years if it gets into the estuaries,” said Glen Brooks, who runs seven hook-and-line grouper boats deep into the gulf out of Cortez, Fla., near Sarasota.
Along the Gulf Coast, where dinner conversations swing quickly from anger toward BP to opinions on the best places to eat brown speckled trout, petroleum and seafood have long been intertwined. The two industries rely on each other. Oil money sustains both the roadside seafood shacks that feed a rig worker’s family and the restaurants designed for expense-account lunches.
And then there are the rigs themselves, more than 3,000 of which dot the gulf. They act as reefs, attracting an extensive variety of species. Both recreational and commercial fishermen know to head toward the rigs to assure a good haul.
But the spill points up the fragile balance between oil and seafood. Pompano, a prized fish that can command $28 on a menu, has its favored breeding territory right in the oil’s path. The coastal marshes that act as nurseries for shrimp, oysters and crab also support dozens of young fin fish, including black drum and sheepshead, the workhorse fish of inexpensive New Orleans restaurants.
“I have a feeling they’ll be selling a whole lot of farmed catfish soon,” said Tenney Flynn, the executive chef and owner of GW Fins in the French Quarter.
At Felix’s Fish Camp Grill on Mobile Bay in Alabama, where as many as 900 people a day come for trout amandine and baked oysters, local seafood is likely to become scarce and cooks will have to buy from Texas, the Carolinas or even other countries, said the manager, Luis del Valle.
The seafood business can be as volatile as the stock market, and prone to speculation and gouging. Already, bidding wars are breaking out over loads of shrimp, and processors are prowling the docks with stacks of $100 bills, buying as much crab as they can, said Tim Sughrue, an owner of Congressional Seafood, a distributor in Maryland.
“It will be felt in terms of higher prices in every aspect of the oyster and crab industry, that’s for certain,” he said.
Large-scale increases are likely after Mother’s Day, said Jeff Tunks, a chef and restaurant owner who serves mostly gulf seafood at Acadiana in Washington. “We’re already at $19.50 a pound for jumbo lump crab meat, and that’s going to skyrocket,” he said. “How much are people willing to pay for crab cakes or shrimp étouffée? We’re going to find out.”
But those in the seafood business worry that diners will simply stop ordering anything from the gulf, even though gulf states regularly test the water and can trace where every load of commercial fish was caught.
In New Orleans, people are more philosophical. It is the Katrina effect, they say. Once you have lost your house and your boat, even members of your family, you learn not to worry about things you cannot control.
“So you buy 20 pounds of shrimp and put it in your freezer,” said Mirta Valdes, who has lived in New Orleans since emigrating from Cuba in 1963. “Tomorrow, there could be another storm and knock out all the electricity, and then you lose your stash anyway.”