Editorial Correction: Closure of Gulf Waters to Shrimping Is Routine

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CORRECTION:

On April 21, ABC affiliate WEAR-TV, which covers Pensacola, Moblie and Fort Walton, reported on its website that some areas of the Gulf were being closed on the morning of April 23 due to concerns over the presence of smaller-than-normal shrimp and shrimp with “lesions.” That report was in line with a multitude of other recent mainstream media reports – from the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and others (see links to articles at bottom) – of severely deformed seafood coming out of the Gulf of Mexico. The deformities – confirmed by local fishermen, seafood processors and scientists alike – include shrimp with no eyes, shrimp with tumors, red snapper and grouper with deep lesions and underdeveloped blue crabs without claws (see video below).

We picked up the WEAR-TV report and published an April 23 post entitled, “Looming Crisis: Officials Close Gulf Waters to Shrimping as Reports of Deformed Seafood Intensify.” Unfortunately, the WEAR-TV report turned out to be incorrect. The ABC affiliate has pulled the initial report and replaced it with this correction dated April 25:

Alabama – The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has temporarily closed some local waterways to shrimping. The waters were closed to shrimping on Monday.

The areas include all waters in the Mississippi Sound, Mobile Bay, areas of Bon Secour, Wolf Bay, and Little Lagoon.

The closure is in response to routine shrimp sampling that indicated the average size were smaller than 68 head-on shrimp per pound. Meaning biologists found smaller than average shrimp in the waters causing the temporary closure. They will continue to take samples in these areas and determine any modifications to the closures.

And we’d like to clarify that the closures were not due to lesions being found on shrimp as we reported earlier this weekend and Monday morning.

Although our “blog team” includes legal experts, civil engineers, toxicologists, Gulf fishermen and a variety of other sources, we must also rely on the mainstream media for information. Unfortunately, the media outlet we relied on in this instance made a reporting error and we unwittingly reproduced that error.

As we strive for the highest standard of journalistic integrity, we have removed our April 23 post.

However, let me be very clear, the confusion over the water closures in no way changes the fact that there are severely deformed shrimp, crabs and fish coming out of the Gulf of Mexico. This video confirms that claim:

Read the WEAR-TV correction here: http://www.weartv.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wear_vid_22028.shtml

Read the AP report on lesion-riddled fish found near the BP spill site: http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/business/article/2-years-later-fish-sick-near-BP-oil-spill-site-3493396.php

Read the Al Jazeera report by Dahr Jamail on severely deformed seafood in the Gulf of Mexico: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241682318260912.html

© Smith Stag, LLC 2012 – All Rights Reserved

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Alarmed by widespread reports of visibly sick, deformed seafood coming out of the Gulf of Mexico, state officials have closed area waters to shrimping this morning (April 23). The waters will be closed indefinitely as scientists run tests in an effort to get a handle on a situation that is fast becoming a full-blown crisis on the Gulf Coast.

The closures – including all waters in the Mississippi Sound, Mobile Bay, areas of Bon Secour, Wolf Bay and Little Lagoon – mark the first official step in responding to increasingly urgent reports from fishermen and scientists of grotesquely disfigured seafood from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle.

The move is yet another major setback for the once-legendary Gulf seafood industry as it continues to struggle under the devastating impact of the BP oil spill, which began in April 2010.

Two years later, reports of severely deformed shrimp with bulging tumors – and no eyes – have become common.

And it’s not just the shrimp. Commercial fishermen are reporting red snapper and grouper riddled with deep lesions and covered with strange black streaks. Highly underdeveloped blue crabs are being pulled up in traps without eyes and claws (see link at bottom to my previous post on seafood deformities).

For those who thought 205 million gallons of oil and 2 million gallons of toxic dispersant weren’t going to have an impact on Gulf seafood, you need to check back in with reality.

As for the impetus for the shrimping closures, consider this from an April 18 Al Jazeera report by Dahr Jamail, who has doggedly covered the BP spill since the early days of the disaster:

Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.

“At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.”

Disturbing indeed. I am deeply saddened but not surprised by the shrimping closures. I applaud the courageous move by state officials to put consumer safety first. There’s no doubt in my mind – as I’ve said for months on end – that seafood coming out of the Gulf of Mexico is unfit for human consumption.

We will bring you updates on water testing and any word on when these areas of the Gulf will be re-opened to shrimping.

Read my April 20 post on seafood deformities here: https://www.stuarthsmith.com/a-taste-of-the-grotesque-in-the-gulf-eyeless-shrimp-clawless-crabs-and-lesion-covered-fish

© Smith Stag, LLC 2012 – All Rights Reserved

22 comments

  • Sen. Mary Landrieu, when interviewed on MSNBC, She says “Senator Landrieu: “Of course fishing just as important as our oil industry.
    All studies show that fish is safe to eat..oysters and shrimp safe according to all studies and we are all eating it as fast as we can.”
    I am sending Sen. Landrieu this article. I will be sending a quote from one of the shrimpers with it, and the people that live in the gulf area that report that they still see tar balls and the sick fish and deformed birds…that are posted on you tube in so many places the educate and inform the rest of this country WHO IS SICK OF THE PEOPLE WE VOTE TO KEEP OUR ENVIRONMENT SAFE FOR THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN, THINKING WE WANT OFFSHORE DRILLING. I am from the North and my heart aches for the illnesses these people and their precious sea life are immersed in. Not one person should be sacrificed over one drop of oil.

  • Every wholesaler and seafood processor needs to be doing their own testing and it should be reimbursed by BP (but not a BP owned lab), If they are counting on the FDA to protect them because they’ve kept saying “it’s safe” they are so wrong. This article in the Miami Herald pretty much sums it up.
    “After all, diseased fish aren’t allowed to be sold”, said Dr. Robert W. Dickey, who heads the Food and Drug Administration’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory “Every wholesaler and seafood processor must follow longstanding FDA rules on what constitutes a safe and usable catch. Fish with lesions or signs of parasites or other disease aren’t allowed,” Dickey said.

    I’m sure the FDA is just ready and waiting to throw a hefty fine at any of those whom sell or process, even without lesions the risk is there, and I personally don’t think they’ll allow them to use the same scientific method as they did the ole “well we smelled it and it seemed alright”
    Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/24/2764124_fda-gulf-seafood-safe-despite.html#storylink=addthis#storylink=cpy

  • A friend just sent me a link to your post. I’m a very healthy person but in the past year or so have had severe “food poisoning” 3 times. When I say “severe,” I mean epic, violent, all-night-long vomiting that throws your back out and leaves you whimpering on the floor. All three times I’d had shrimp. I’ve never been allergic to shrimp, have eaten it my whole life, and the first 2 times I thought it had been run-of-the-mill food poisoning. The last time I realized it had been the shrimp, in fact, a SINGLE shrimp mindlessly eaten as a tray was passed around at a cocktail party. I knew it was the shrimp that had done it because my body did not stop convulsing until it had gotten rid of that one shrimp, and that specific taste was the overwhelming sensation for hours afterward. My body sent a clear signal: don’t ever eat shrimp again. I had seen THE BIG FIX last Fall and for the first time I made the connection. I attribute my newfound “allergy” to shrimp to Corexit, the dispersant BP pumped into the Gulf months after it officially “stopped.” I’m not one given to conspiracy theories or overreaction, but I am convinced.

  • And this is the good news! Once shrimp is cut off from the Gulf then the main shrimp is most likely going to be the new PLUTONIUM 239 infused shrimp coming from Japan, Alaska, and the West Coast. All polluted and full of death. ONE SPECK. Eat it and die. Shrimp cozumel is now scratched until the end of this crisis. What is that, hundreds of thousands of years to wait? Thanks TEPCO. Thanks GE. Thanks you murdering scumbag politicians. Karma’s coming.

  • Yea, Legalized Global Corporate Terrorism, really something, isn’t it? Hehehe. Interesting how the people will keep on tolerating their own demise as well as the destruction of their families and surroundings all for the benefit of the few. From the Gulf of Mexico to Japan, life’s hell ain’t it? AGENDA 21 anyone???

  • Does Obama really care about the health of his people, or is he just working to poison and weaken them to prevent the possibility of any reaction by them against Israel, when sufficient people see the film ‘911missinglinks’ and come to understand clearly that Israel did 9/11, and that America just trashed three whole countries for nothing, except to fulfill the desire of Israel to kill all Arabs.

    How many people know that Obama has stopped importation of seafood by much of the US military, and has insisted they all eat Gulf seafood instead, to ‘instil confidence’ in the quality of Gulf seafood, to benefit the ailing fishing industry, just like they stopped the rescue workers on 9/11, witnesses to what really happened, from wearing respiratory gear that would have kept them alive, to ‘instil confidence’ that the air in that vicinity was safe for all to breath that day.

    Obama has not been spraying the most lethal toxin in the Gulf area that he could possibly find for nothing; he means to poison the Gulf and everybody around it. Completely non-toxic alternatives were available to mop up all the oil, from the very beginning, and still Obama carries on spraying mutagenic and carcinogenic corexit all over the Gulf area to damage the DNA of all creatures there for all time to come.

    How long would it take a sane man to ban not just shrimp, but all seafood from that area, and to ban the spraying of corexit too?

  • THIS IS OBUMMAS FAULT FOR LETTING HIS BUDDIES AT BP SPRAY MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF COREXIT. IT REALLY CORRECTS IT. .GOD SAID THE OCEANS WILL TURN BLACK SO GET READY FOR THAT.

  • When will business and government of the United Corporations of Amerika start protecting the citizens of this once great country?

  • This should have been obvious

    Let’s face the Reality here folks, do to Business/corporate pressure the state and Federal government won’t admit anything is wrong until people start keeling over sick or dead

    They are just rolling the dice and playing the odds that the most serious affects of eating this food doesn’t show up for another decade …

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
Cooper Law Firm

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