U.S. Closes Area of Gulf of Mexico to Shrimping After Tar Balls Discovered in Netting

[Nathanael]

A relatively small area, but nevertheless not the type of publicity the government wants as it tries to rebuild consumer confidence in Gulf seafood.


The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has closed roughly 4,123 miles of the Gulf of Mexico to royal red shrimping after a shrimper discovered tar balls in his net.

The closure is of an area which is close to the explosion site, and will affect Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. This is the first closure since the oil leak was capped and NOAA opened up 99% of the Gulf waters to fishing.

Link: http://www.energyboom.com/policy/us-closes-area-gulf-mexico-shrimping-after-tar-balls-discovered-netting

[XemaSab]

1. It's not the oil you can see that worries me

It's the oil you can't see.

I am DONE with gulf seafood. Period.

[Poll_Blind]

2. What they're doing is handing out banades but doing nothing about the greater disease.

In some period of time they'll lift the ban. And, when other reports come in, hopefully they'll also close those areas.

But what they will not do is face the fact that BP has polluted the Gulf in an apocalyptic way. Remember Obama's "I need to know whose ass to kick." line. That's bullshit. He didn't kick anyone's ass. He worked out a deal to put billions from BP in escrow except I haven't heard much about that money going anywhere because cleanup operations are ending/have ended maybe quite a while ago.

There's tar all over the bottom of the Gulf and nobody's doing anything to clean it up. Even when BP's own studies said that a leak in deep water like this would result in just that.

I grew up in Chalmette, Louisiana. Just south of New Orleans. Seafood from that area, I can't explain how much of our lives it was. Big piles of crawfish, tables just stacked with crawfish and crab. Going crabbing. Experiencing all that.

Because of the absolutely terrible, unrealistic approach BP has taken to cleaning the oil, I have absolutely every reason to believe that any seafood from the Gulf is polluted.

Just a week or so before the BP incident, Obama was talking about offshore drilling being the "solution". It wasn't then, it's not now.

He didn't hold Bush & Dick and Rummy up to justice, he didn't hold BP up to its responsibilities (after the cameras got turned off) and while it's not specifically about Obama, any President in a situation like this who doesn't ride the perpetrators of a crime- well, it means any future president is not going to address it either.

PB