Tag Archives: Louisiana Seafood

Rep. Garret Graves wants federal funding to reduce imported seafood, aid Louisiana fishery

U.S. Rep. Garret Graves and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser are calling for more federal funding to test imported seafood and tighter regulations to slow the influx of foreign catch onto Louisiana’s seafood market. Both Graves and Nungesser shared separate though somewhat similar proposals recently with the Louisiana Seafood Safety Task Force, which is working to address a struggling domestic fishery and the increasing health threats from imported foreign seafood. Foreign catch has become so cheap that it now comprises nearly 90 percent of all seafood consumed in America, according to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board. more, >>click to read<< 15:30

New Orleans fishing industry suffers sourcing issues

Fishing runs through Merlin Schaeffer’s blood. He has been fishing in Louisiana waters for decades, and before him, so were his father and his grandfather. While primarily a fisherman in Lake Pontchartrain, Schaeffer is also the owner of Schaeffer’s Seafood. Located in Bucktown, a small community that thrives on the fishing industry, Schaeffer’s is a shop that sells anything from crabs to shrimp to catfish. Because fishing is a touch-and-go job, fishermen often lack routine and certainty when they head out to work, he said. “You gotta go with the flow, around the weather, the bite, the tide, it goes off a lot, the sails,” Schaeffer said. “Everything varies.” This variance includes prices as well. >click to read< 11:30

Barataria Bay project seen to create 27 square miles of land, displace brown shrimp and oysters

“The fishing industry doesn’t see the payoff here. It’s going to kill us more than it’s going to help anything,” said Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. He said he feels as though the sparsely populated fishing communities of lower Plaquemines Parish, where the diversion is to be built, have been written off.,,  Louisiana’s proposal for Mid-Barataria calls for spending part of a $303 million chunk of mitigation money to help fishers adapt to the disruption in their lives and their bank accounts. But industry representatives doubt that the government’s analyses sufficiently assess the economic cost of such a drastic change to an industry that not only supplies seafood,,, >click to read< 10:12

Forum hosted by Vitter – Agriculture, forestry, seafood experts discuss key topics in Alexandria

Other topics Wednesday included the effect of government regulations, the slow recovery of commercial fishing following the BP oil spill, safety concerns about imported seafood and the risk to Louisiana’s timberland posed by a shrinking fire protection budget. “We spent millions of dollars on commercials convincing the rest of the country everything is ok, but it’s not really ok,” Barisich said, referring to the publicity campaign launched after the spill that was aimed at promoting Louisiana seafood. Read the rest here 08:46

Louisiana Seafood: Shrimp, crab catch mixed post BP oil spill, river diversions

While the oyster harvest east of the Mississippi River has dropped precipitously in the years since the BP oil spill and an influx of fresh water from several Mississippi River diversions, white shrimp and blue crab fared much better there. continued@nolanola logo