While the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been reporting a mostly clean bill of health for Gulf of Mexico seafood, oysters have been a bivalve of question.
While the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been reporting a mostly clean bill of health for Gulf of Mexico seafood, oysters have been a bivalve of question. Two weeks ago the AP quoted marine scientist George Crozier, who directs the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, saying that oysters are the slowest seafood to clear contamination out of their bodies. “I probably would put oysters at the top of the concern list and I don’t think there’s a close second,” Crozier told the AP.
Today, a report commissioned by Louisiana Environmental Action Network, the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper and the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper announces that along the Louisiana coastline, oysters are contaminated with oil.
New Iberia chemist Wilma Subra found oil in oysters she sampled from a reef and an old crab trap. “We found oysters in the shell and they appeared to have accumulated the hydrocarbons,” Subra says. “I would think that these are indications that there is contamination in the oysters and additional sampling should be performed.”
Meanwhile the APreports that DHH, which has been testing oysters since the BP rig blew in the Gulf in April, has found no oysters with high levels of hydrocarbon contamination. “We have not found anything at a level of concern,” Olivia Watkins, a DHH spokeswoman told the AP. “What we have found is extremely low."
The state is slowly reopening oyster reefs for harvesting. Traditionally fall oysters, which begin to reach their peak in December, return to local menus in September and October.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
Subscribe to this comment's feed