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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 2
October 2005
Fishermen struggling with Katrina aftermath
 Top, shrimp boats in Bayou La Batre, AL after Katrina passed through. Above, satellite view of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico, taken on Aug. 28 when the storm was a Category Five hurricane (click image to zoom). NOAA photo
BATON ROUGE, LA - The destruction and human suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina is nearly incomprehensible. In a matter of hours on Aug. 29, entire fishing communities along the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama coasts were literally washed away.
Fishing boats, docks, ice houses, fish houses – the basic infrastructure of the fishing industry – were all devastated. In some areas, boats that made it through the storm were still askew on land or trapped in bayous by debris three weeks later.
And even if fishermen could get out they couldn’t trawl because of the massive amount of debris on and below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico water.
“The whole area, from the mouth of the Mississippi River all the way to Texas is loaded. There’s whole houses floating out there,” said Terry Pizani of Grand Isle, which is on a barrier island due south of New Orleans in Jefferson Parish.
His two boats, a 47' steel shrimp-fish combo and a 43' shrimper named Flying Angel, survived the storm, although the Flying Angel had a hole in her side from being beaten up against the docks.
But it wouldn’t do Pizani much good to go fishing even if he could. Dean Blanchard’s Shrimp Co. on Grand Isle, where he unloads, was gone. So was Wayne Estery’s shrimp dock and ice house.
“They are no longer there. They are completely gone,” he said.
With everything in his house ruined by water damage, Pizani was living in a camper trailer in Galliano, about 50 miles from home. A Louisiana Shrimp Association board member, he was returning to Grand Isle every day to help unload tractor trailer loads of food and clothing donated through his association and local churches.
Finding people
George Barisich of Violet in St. Bernard Parish, about 18 miles southeast of New Orleans, is president of United Commercial Fisherman’s Association (UCFA). He considered himself one of the lucky ones.
Although he came home to find 3" of water in his attic, his two boats – a 50' shrimper and a 44' oyster boat – not only survived, they provided refuge for more than a dozen people left homeless by the hurricane.
With the UCFA’s office in Chalmette decimated, Barisich set up a makeshift shop in Baton Rouge. He used a laptop computer belonging to his son and a somewhat unreliable phone to create a registry for displaced fishermen so people could find each other. As of Sept. 21, about 300 fishermen had called in.
“Fortunately there was minimal loss of life among the fishermen around here,” he said. “All the fishermen I know of who stayed with their boats (during the storm) lived.”
However, fishing towns all around him, including Yscloskey, Shell Beach, Hopedale, and Delacroix, were devastated.
“There’s not one structure that can stay,” Barisich said of his hometown. “They’ll have to bulldoze my community.”
In 2002, Barisich was named one of National Fisherman’s highliners for his efforts to bring processors and fishermen together to respond to massive imports of farm-raised shrimp that have slashed prices paid to domestic producers.
“We thought we had problems with the fishery before,” he said. “Now we’ve got real problems just subsisting.”
Losses by numbers
According to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report updated on Sept. 12, the areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama hit hard by Hurricane Katrina contained 15 major fishing ports, 177 seafood processing facilities, and 1,816 federally permitted fishing vessels.
Commercial shrimpers fishing out of or delivering to ports in this area account for almost half of all US shrimp production. The storm hit at the peak of the harvesting season.
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (DWF) attempted to give some idea of the dimensions of the infrastructure damage by pointing out that 33 percent of the wholesale/retail seafood dealers licensed in the state were based in the parishes that suffered the most damage: Jefferson, half of Lafourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, and St. Tammany.
A total of 4,935 vessels and 4,767 commercial fishermen were licensed by the state in those parishes at the time of the storm.
Assuming 99 percent oyster mortality based on the size and strength of the storm, the DWF estimated the direct loss of available oyster resource in Louisiana at more than $205 million. The CRS report estimated oyster reef rehabilitation costs at more than $860 million.
As of Sept. 21, DWF’s preliminary estimates predicted the following potential retail sale losses for Louisiana fisheries:
• Shrimp – $539 million;
• Oysters – $150 million;
• Crab – $81 million;
• Saltwater fish – $79 million;
• Menhaden – $93 million; and
• Recreational – $200 million.
The storm also caused significant damage to the National Marine Fisheries Service lab in Pascagoula, MS.
Disaster declaration
On Sept. 9, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez announced a formal determination of a fishery failure in the Gulf of Mexico. This declaration, made through provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the Interjurisdictional Fisheries Act, opens the door for federal financial assistance.
The money, which must be appropriated by Congress, can be used to assess impacts, restore fisheries, prevent future failures, and assist fishing community recovery efforts.
After Hurricane Ivan struck the Gulf Coast last year, $9 million was appropriated to repair oyster industries in four Gulf states. In 1997, $10 million in aid was appropriated in the wake of damage caused by Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew.
A great need
Pizani and Barisich both confirmed that the need for help was huge and that donations were gratefully accepted. But in addition to sending money to private aid organizations, Barisich said fishermen in the Northeast could help greatly by urging their congressional representatives to support federal disaster appropriations.
“The Magnuson-Stevens Act disaster relief is the only way that we’re going to get put back on our feet,” he said.
As of Sept. 21, it looked like Texas was in for a beating, too, as Hurricane Rita roared across the Gulf of Mexico heading straight for Galveston.
“I can feel it,” Pizani said of Rita. “There’s sustained winds of 15 mph, gusting to 20 right now.”
Lorelei Stevens
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