Workers offload oysters in Pass Christian, Miss. The oyster industry has been crippled by the BP oil spill, and it could take six to 10 years to recover.
George Barisich, president of the United Commercial Fishermen's Association, and a shrimper and oysterman, was encouraged that his payment will be quadrupled but is uncertain it will truly make up for his losses.
And he's not quite ready to write the happy ending story line, even if it's a decade away.
"We can't keep any small oysters alive," he said. "We never had that before."
Otherwise, the generally rosy projection for the future runs counter to earlier suggestions by environmentalists and scientists that the gulf will take longer to recover and that the full extent of the damage may not be known for years. It is almost certain to stir more controversy over the much-criticized program that is paying claims to spill victims if they forgo suing the oil giant in court. A quick recovery means there will be less damage for which BP has to make amends.
"Predicting the future is not an exact science," Feinberg said Wednesday. "I've tried as best I can to come up with a formula that will work and will adequately reflect the uncertainty about the gulf."
He invited anyone who disagrees with his conclusions to express their views on the Gulf Coast Claims Facility fund's website during a two-week period for public comment.
The environmental findings were made for Feinberg by Wes Tunnell, a marine biologist at Texas A&M's Harte Research Institute in Corpus Christi, who studied the aftermath of the gulf's only other major oil disaster: the Ixtoc spill off the coast of Mexico in 1979. In that spill, the oil ran for nearly 10 months before engineers were able to shut down the blown-out well.
Tunnell was paid $225 an hour by the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, the compensation fund's formal name, to prepare his 39-page report.
He concluded that generally, fish, blue crabs and shrimp should recover to their previous harvest levels this year. But he said some oyster beds may not recover for six to 10 years.
"Oysters are more problematic," Feinberg said. "The inability of oysters to swim away from the oil (makes) it even more uncertain. There won't be any gradual recovery. At the end of a certain period of time, either those oysters will be buoyant and there will be a good market for them, or there won't. We are concerned enough about the uncertainty of the oyster harvesting that there ought to be a premium, an add-on."
In his report, Tunnell noted that no long-term scientific studies tracked the aftermath of the Ixtoc spill, but that fishermen along the mangrove shoreline reported that all mangrove oysters died from heavy oiling "from Ixtoc oil and never returned."
He said it would be difficult to conclude the exact dose of oil many areas received during the Deepwater Horizon spill, even with a review of NOAA's detailed oiling maps. He also noted that many oysters were killed off by the diversion of fresh water in Barataria Bay that was released to help push oil away from the oyster beds. Other oysters were likely killed, Tunnell said, by flooding of the lower Mississippi River.
Barisich said the new young oysters, called spat, are dying after three or four months.
He said the cause of the die-off has not been determined in St. Bernard Parish, where he leases 400 acres of oyster beds. That area was not as heavily oiled as parishes to the west. Barisich believes the prime suspect is the dispersant used to break up the oil as it moved closer to shore.
Barisich said it will cost him $11,000 an acre just to lay down a layer of clean bedding material to rebuild his reef again.
Barisich said oyster harvesting has suffered one calamity after another even before BP's well blew out in April.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina wiped out his oyster beds, smothering them with mud. He rebuilt his beds in 2006, but they were damaged again in 2008 by Hurricane Gustav.
By last spring, his oysters were recovering, although they were not yet producing at the levels of their pre-hurricane years.
"That's one of the problems with this program," he said. "None of us were back when the spill happened. My production is nowhere near where it used to be. I know it isn't BP's fault that we went through two hurricanes. They want to pay me four times of a 40 percent production, which is where I was last spring. That's not equitable. It's better than nothing."
Photo: Mario Tama, Getty Images
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina wiped out his oyster beds, smothering them with mud. He rebuilt his beds in 2006, but they were damaged again in 2008 by Hurricane Gustav.
By last spring, his oysters were recovering, although they were not yet producing at the levels of their pre-hurricane years.
"That's one of the problems with this program," he said. "None of us were back when the spill happened. My production is nowhere near where it used to be. I know it isn't BP's fault that we went through two hurricanes. They want to pay me four times of a 40 percent production, which is where I was last spring. That's not equitable. It's better than nothing."
Photo: Mario Tama, Getty Images
