News Editor
Ed Lallo is the editor of Gulf Seafood News and CEO of Newsroom Ink, an online brand journalism agency. He is also owner of Lallo Photography based in Chapel Hill, NC.
Life has been like a bowl of gumbo for James Carville, Louisiana’s most famous political consultant. For 77-years he has stirred the hot pot, not always sure of success. But when it comes to making real gumbo, with real seafood, there’s only one he accepts, Louisiana Gulf seafood.
2020-2021 Hurricane report – FINAL 01.13.22 Appendix A – 2020-2021 Louisiana Hurricane Damage Survey Appendix B – Survey Comments – FINAL APPENDIX C – Hurricane Ida Fish Kill Inland Report
For more than six hours fifth-generation Houma oysterman Jacob David Hulse, his girlfriend Lindsey Willis and his dog Change huddled in an the oyster shop of friend Kenneth (Keno) Templet struggling to keep the walls and roof from caving as the more than 140-mph winds of Hurricane Ida continuously battered away at the structure. When the winds started to subside, Hulse thought he had gone through the worse of it. Like many Louisiana fishermen are finding out, his troubles were only beginning after the storm was finished.
The Twin Parish Port District has received a two million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for infrastructure at the Port of Delcambre. The MARAD Port Infrastructure Development Program grant will fund dock restoration on two aging structures, as well as the construction of a new industrial fabrication facility.
On August 29, 2021 Hurricane Ida blasted ashore along the Louisiana coast almost complete destroying everything in its path. Infrastructure was hard hit, especially infrastructure vital to Louisiana’s $2.4 billion seafood industry. Four months later little has changed, and the state’s fishermen, docks, processors, fish houses and restaurants are wondering if it will ever return.
For more than 50-years Lafayette locals joined tourists from around the globe to dine on plates of Cajun crawfish and crabs, then dance off the dinner to the sounds of a Acadiana music. That era has ended. Restaurateur Frank Randol has closed the doors on his restaurant and associated seafood processing business.
Louisiana Sea Grant and LSU AgCenter have partnered with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to compile an economic assessment of fisheries infrastructure damage from hurricanes that have devastated one of the State’s largest industries during the past two years.
Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission (JEDCO), in partnership with the Town of Jean Lafitte, is hosting “Focus on our Fishermen”. The evening event on Tuesday, November 9th at the Jean Lafitte Civic Center will provide fishermen and fisheries-related businesses access to tools and resources that can guide to recovery from Hurricane Ida.
For every hurricane during the past 40-years Preston Dore has rode out the storms at the Delcambre docks on his shrimp boat. After Katrina, Gustav, Isaac and a host of others, both he and the boat have walked away mostly unscathed. Hurricane Ida was different. The storm has cost him his boat, his livelihood and has stripped away his dignity as a provider for his family.
For almost two hours Louisiana’s seafood leaders from all sectors of the industry gathered via zoom, mobile phones at restaurants or in cars, and in a conference room in Baton Rouge to discuss the damage of Hurricane Ida’s wrath on the State’s seafood industry. The consensus; the hurricane laid a path of destruction that has crippled almost every sector.
As one of her sons rode out the wrath of Hurricane Ida’s 170 mph winds on his shrimp boat at the dock of her seafood processing business in Dulac, Trudy Luke and her husband Timmy with the rest of the family worried what they would find when they returned home.
Hurricane Ida struck the heart of Louisiana’s seafood industry as a Category 4 hurricane, wiping out homes, boats, trucks, plants and icehouses. Oyster farmers on Grand Isle lost their entire crop, processing plants from Grand Isle to Dulac lay in ruin and almost 30% of the shrimping fleet in Golden Meadow lay useless at the start of current shrimp season. “If the Louisiana seafood industry is to have any life at all in the near future,” said Gulf Seafood Foundation board member Ewell Smith, “it is all about ice.”
DONATE NOW!!! Hurricane Ida has left a path of destruction through Louisiana, and in that path was seafood community after seafood community. Donate to the Gulf Seafood Foundation’ “Helping Hands” for Hurricane Ida.
Louisiana oysterman Jakov Jurisic is no stranger to adversity. The Gulf oyster industry, along with other Gulf seafood, is in a historic nosedive never before seen. The perfect storm of too much water, a national pandemic and the closure of restaurant after restaurant have forced those in the industry to reexamine the path forward.
For Louisiana oysterman Tony Tesvich the last few years have been all about water, water, and more water. Too much, too little, poor quality, high salinity, low salinity, nitrogen, phosphates and hypoxia; over the past two years his oysters have been flooded with a host of water issues with the latest being the future plans of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CRPA).
Visitor Comments