Originally Posted by OrangeOkie
Originally Posted by johnw
Left home for a brief road trip Friday afternoon. Have been in Orange Beach AL for about 48 hours now. We’re enjoying the nice weather,and beaches. Walking more than I have in months.

We met another couple from Ocean Springs, MS on the beach yesterday. We struck up a conversation about their cool electric driven bicycles, and the talk wandered into beaches,the water,and seafood.

They explained the differences between varieties of shrimp. Cool facts, but I’m not fussy about my shrimp as long as they are hot and plentiful.

They also claimed that the oysters were shipped in, as there is no longer an oyster industry anywhere in the gulf. They claimed that the Deep Water Horizon disaster wiped out almost all of the oysters and a large part of the crab population.

They talked about dead dolphins and sea turtles in large numbers.

They painted a pretty bleak picture of the gulf, with the 2010 oil spill and even floodwater releases by the Corp of Engineers as major destruction events for marine life.

Looking to the ‘fire for information here.
Is the gulf dead or dying? Likely to recover?

Writing this from the balcony outside our room, 3rd floor, Sleep Inn, Orange Beach AL




They are enviro-nazis pulling your leg. The Gulf and estuaries fully recovered. The famous Apalachicola oyster industry, in the Florida Panhandle, was damaged and flooded out by a hurricane. Had nothing to do with the oil leak. The Louisiana crab, shrimp and oyster industry recovered almost immediately and is thriving.


The oyster beds were covered by the oil laden dispersant. The oyster fishers invested heavily in planting lime rock to give new oysters a place to grow. Oysters in LA and especially in MS are way off pre-spill numbers. The Spillway openings have been very hard on MS and LA east of the river. The frequent openings have more to do with the lower commercial landings than the spill though.

Crabs lost almost an entire recruitment class in the year of the spill. I had a chat with a researcher who harvested numerous blue crabs from the affected area. He took a control group from an unaffected area. He was only able to induce spawn in less than 5% of those taken from the affected areas. He induced spawn in over 50% from the unaffected areas. Crab seem to be doing well now.

Shrimp landings in LA over the past two years are at historic lows. Half of the historic highs. My belief is that the interior marsh being walled off by the levees is having an impact. I hope I am wrong. Again, not a BP spill issue.