Gulf Habitat Rebounds, Livelihoods Uncertain

One year after the infamous British Petroleum oil spill devastated the Gulf Coast habitat, scientists say the overall health of the Gulf of Mexico appears to have returned to normal.

"There was absolutely no evidence, visual evidence that these platforms, these artificial reefs had ever been in the proximity of a major spill," Dr. Quenton Dokken of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation said.

Todd Baker, a biologist with theLouisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, agreed.

"You'll see that the mangroves here are fairly healthy," he noted. "You didn't see a lot of dead, standing mangrove, not a lot of brown or grey."

There is even new life in the region's tourism industry.

"We've got hoteliers right now telling us they've got more on the books for May and June and July than they had actually stay there back in 2009, the months before the oil spill," said Ed Schroeder, director of the Pensacola Bay Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Despite the improvement of the Gulf's habitat, it's still difficult to measure the exact cost to people's lives and livelihoods.

Texas oysterman Mitch Jurishich is expecting one of his best harvests in years. But he's nervous consumers, remembering last year's troubles, may not be so quick to buy this year.

"I just want to go back to work," Jurishich said. "I just want to put all of this behind me. What's on my mind is how can we convince the country that our oysters are safe? Come back and eat them so we can harvest them."

Still, there are oystermen in Louisiana who can't catch a break.

Last year, the state diverted fresh water from the Mississippi River to help keep the oil out of the bays. Unfortunately, oysters need salt water to live.

"If they didn't release the fresh water, the oysters wouldn't have died and I'd be 'oystering' right now," oysterman Nick Collins said.

Meanwhile, there has been another development one year after the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Some of the people who responded to the spill have been complaining of illness.

The real disaster was having the media down there yammering about the Gulf being dead for a century blah, blah, blah. The good people on the Gulf should have armed themselves and chased the scaremongers and their cameras out of the state.

Now they will be back every “anniversary,” hoping to find one dead crab on the beach. They’ll bewail the economic failure of businesses that they themselves doomed by their hysterical coverage.

The only happy ones on this anniversary are BO and the Democrat Party, which received a twenty billion dollar pay-off from BP that will probably wind up in Democrat campaign coffers from sea to shining sea next year.

Still, there are oystermen in Louisiana who can't catch a break.

These hand wringing articles are all written as thought the poor (fill in the blank) are forced to continue trying to do the same job. They're not. All it takes is some initiative, a LOT of perserverance, and a willingness to change. Most would rather cry for a handout.

In 1902 United Leather was on of the largest companies in the USA (they made harnesses, saddles, etc.) with the advent of the automobile most united leather workers had to find other work or starve. They didn't have the option of sticking their hands in the pockets of their fellow citizens. Oddly enough most of them managed. Today welfare and unemployment give a disincentive to seek work for those who need to move on to something else.

While your comment regarding United Leather is interesting, did the automobile cause the leather harness and saddle business to evaporate overnight? Seems cars and horses coexisted a while and the trend became obvious over time.

Most people along this coast are willing to move on, start over again. Problem is where do you go and when do you decide to cut. Most would have been way better off to cash out somewhere around April 25, 2010. They would have had the money for the U-Haul. How credit worthy will a oyster harvester be when he walks away from the boat he can't sell or the home no one wants to buy in a market with little more than fishing as the major industry.

So oysterman becomes HVAC tech maybe and works on refrigerent systems on the other boats that don't go out either. Sure he can move to Atlanta, of course he can't buy a home there because the mortgage in Venice. LA.

By the way everyone in the USA was hurt by the bad economy, from CA to NY and even LA and AL and FL. Add the bad economy to Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, and BP it it gets complicated

Yeah, those dumb hick Southerners are just standing in the way of progress. Nobody vacations at the beach anymore, we now, what, exactly? Nobody eats seafood anymore, we now eat Soylent Green? And of course nobody is driving gas fueled cars or using petroleum based products.

Your comment only makes sense if the people 'whining' were in obsolete jobs. But, they are not. They have the Media and the Government to thank why they are not employed. And if the Media-Political Complex would just get the @#$% out of the way and let these people get their jobs and life back, they would.

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